HDS makes another play for NAS with BlueArc buy

I just read Steve Duplessie’s take on the HDS acquisition of Bluearc. If I had a dollar for every time I read about HDS buying a NAS appliance, I’d still be poor. They tried it a few times with some small OEMs over the years and in most cases the problem was part technology and part a sales issue.

Let’s face it… HDS is used to selling humongosaur-like systems to the very large enterprises who can afford to buy big iron. Much of HDS’ traditional hardware (manufactured by parent Hitachi) is designed around block-based storage (yes, agree with Steve on this).

Unfortunately for HDS, and lucky for NAS-behemoth NetApp, there are still customers out there, even the big ones, who need file storage  because companies still store a lot of information in the form of files – probably a lot more than you feel comfortable with. I have a 1.5TB redundant NAS appliance at home serving the four members of my family. Yes, applications like ERP, CRM and SCM have limited use for NAS systems and will run a lot faster if the database is running off a powerful SAN engine. But for 100% of employees in any company, they will need to store their files in the network somewhere – and a NAS is a perfect place for that.

So back to HDS… why does HDS need a NAS solution? Likely because customers are hinting they need it. But more importantly lacking a NAS  solution gives competitors like NetApp a window to get in and slowly eat through the HDS armor that surrounds Mr Enterprise customer.

Will this ever work for HDS? I think the bigger challenge for HDS is understanding the technology and being able to sell it convincingly.  From history, this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where all those countless NAS technologies that HDS tried to sell got buried. The good news is HDS has had a few years of history selling BlueArc. Now its just a matter of getting the sales people (in Asia) to get moving.

 

Of friends and enemies

Some months back I spoke to a senior executive discussing about their product strategy. At one point in the discussion, he quoted an old Arabian Proverb: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. It is his interpretation of how partnerships are created in the business world. What scares me is that I understood what he meant and see its practical applications.

A week ago I wrote about SAP’s acquisition of Sybase and its implication to the software arms race. I follow this rant with a twist that comes in the form of new partnerships that are shaping up, not directly as a result of SAP’s acquisition, but as a progression of what’s been happening in the IT industry over the last five years.

And it begins with an interesting article written by Gavin Clarke (the UK Register) around the budding relationship between SAP and HP, as they go after Oracle in a more concerted effort. For HP, its because Oracle dumped its technology (Exadata 1) in favor of Sun (Exadata 2), following Oracle’s acquisition last year of Scott McNealy’s company. And to think that at the 2009 Oracle OpenWorld there was scant anonymity between HP and Oracle despite the Sun relationship.

So with all the knowledge gained from the first Exadata, HP brings a lot of knowledge to bear. Still I think the new SAP appliance will have a tough time competing with the Oracle product (now on Gen 2). SAP will likely integrate its expertise around in-memory architecture (NetWeaver Business Warehouse Accelerator) to market a “powerful calculation engine” for data modeling applications.

SAP Co-CEO  Bill McDermott told Informationweek’s Doug Henschen that SAP had briefed partners including IBM, HP, EMC and Cisco on its plans. Partners are eager to embrace the innovation, he said, and said they will find opportunities to build new products and services around the engine.

Granted that HP, IBM and EMC are interested in building an appliance to compete with the Exadata (with HP having a leg-up at this point in time), at this point IBM would be in the best position given that it has a strong database business, has a captive “mainframe” market, and the resources to spend on R&D. All this without necessarily working with SAP assuming that the German software giant will want to push its Sybase database as part of the bundle. HP may be more interested in this although it would hurt its relationship with Oracle big time (we’ve seen this with HP’s relationship with Cisco).

Speaking of which, a Cisco-EMC-SAP triumvirate may present the best opportunity to run against Oracle.

For the moment, Oracle has the upper hand, having created an opportunity with the Exadata and the rest of the industry is playing catch-up. Larry Ellison is having a ball.