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LAS VEGAS—The future of computing was being played out on both ends of the Strip here. On one end, at EMC World, Michael Dell introduced the new tech giant “Dell Technologies” and its enterprise subsidiary, Dell EMC, pending ratification by shareholders this summer.
On stage at the Sands Convention Center, Joe Tucci looked misty recounting his first “Wizards” EMC conference in February 2001 and was thanked with a standing ovation by some 10,000 attendees. Michael Dell was beaming as he figuratively took the mantle from Tucci. “We are building a company that can take you to the future,” he said.
We don’t know yet what the two have wrought. To be sure, EMC is going into the future aggressively with new data center hardware and software, while executives say the two companies have really clicked in the merger and integration process, looking forward to “Day 1.” But the other shoe has yet to drop in this scene, with product consolidation and broad layoffs to come in the days following.
On the other end of the Strip at the Interop conference at Mandalay Bay, a former member of the EMC Federation, Martin Casado, talked about the “end of infrastructure” in his keynote presentation. Casado was founder of Nicira Networks, which was acquired by VMware in 2012 and whose technology became the NSX software virtualization platform.
“The prevailing wisdom is that we are in the armpit of infrastructure. That is overly pessimistic and dead wrong,” said Casado, who this year left VMware to join venture firm Andreessen Horowitz. “We are on the cusp of something bigger, better and more innovative. We are entering a golden age of infrastructure.”
That new infrastructure is software—open-source software. The rest is so much technology “wrapped in sheet metal,” he said, adding that open source is going to further shake the fabric of the industry by “massively disrupting traditional go-to-market engines.”
Software-Defined Co-existence
Back at EMC World, Chad Sakac, the new president of EMC’s Converged Infrastructure Division, said it comes down to a critical decision for enterprises: “Would you rather build or buy?” The message is that EMC can make it easier and more cost-effective for customers to buy a cloud on a VxRack System 1000 than try to roll out OpenStack on their own servers. He is probably correct for existing EMC customers.
But things are shifting quickly, and more and more we are hearing about companies taking risks with technology, adopting open source and DevOps, rolling out containers on bare metal servers and showing positive business results.
Joyent CTO Bryan Cantrill talked at the Interop Container Summit about how payroll firm ADP, “traditionally as conservative as you can imagine and which has been around since the dawn of computing, is very aggressively trying to disrupt themselves before they get disrupted.”
EMC, Dell Getting Ready for a Software-Defined Future
EMC’s customers say much the same thing with respect to EMC hardware accelerating business outcomes—companies such as Lids with Vblock converged systems, CMA Consulting Services with DSSD D5 flash systems and the Hollard Insurance Group with XtremIO flash systems.
Fortunately for EMC, it also has strong stories around software, open source and the cloud, with the added refrain that it all works better together on EMC hardware (despite the fact that EMC is building on the same Intel Haswell processors, solid-state drives and PCIe drive interfaces as the so-called white-box vendors are).
But one of the new products rolled out last week, the Unity storage system, is a sign of where EMC is headed. It is a hybrid in more ways than one. It can run as an all-flash array or with a mix of flash and traditional hard drives. It can also run as software-only on your own white-box array or in a cloud environment, as well as an EMC Unity box.
EMC also is making a lot of progress around open source and its new EMC {code} division. It was recently announced that one of the first {code} efforts, REX-Ray, has been integrated with Mesosphere’s DC/OS 1.7. REX-Ray allows Docker containers to link up with external block storage systems in AWS, OpenStack, and EMC’s Isilon, ScaleIO, XtremIO and VMAX systems.
In some ways I can see why Michael Dell is so excited. Technology is more advanced than ever, while EMC and its customers are seeing now how much of a game-changer software is. But at the same time, I see the gleaming blue boxes in which EMC packages its arrays and can’t help but think they are a throwback to an earlier era.
Interestingly, both conferences had ’80s-themed parties on Wednesday night, with former glam rockers Duran Duran performing at the EMC party. They were an inspired choice. For those who like strange coincidences, Duran Duran released its first album, Planet Earth, within weeks of IBM shipping its first PC in the summer of 1981, which is the last time enterprise computing got turned on its head like this.
Scot Petersen is a technology analyst at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. He has an extensive background in the technology field. Prior to joining Ziff Brothers, Scot was the editorial director, Business Applications & Architecture, at TechTarget. Before that, he was the director, Editorial Operations, at Ziff Davis Enterprise. While at Ziff Davis Media, he was a writer and editor at eWEEK. No investment advice is offered in his blog. All duties are disclaimed. Scot works for a private investment firm, which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.