Welcome to the party, EMC (Thanks Chuck for the preannouncement the other day and to all the other Twitter messages that made it clear what was happening). I'm glad after Joe Tucci promised this to be available in May and then again by the end of summer, you are finally announcing your product. But alas, we're still short on details. How much will you charge? We already announced pricing back in May, under $2GB. The HP StorageWorks 9100 Extreme Data Storage System (ExDS9100) will be shipping product around the end of November. EMC claimed general availability in June, but customers tell us it is not ready for prime time. Every single deal we have been in with EMC, we have won.

Now let us explore a few shortcomings in EMC's product (based on the few details we have) compared with the ExDS9100:

• To compare with our ExDS9100 Max Config: it takes 3 racks of EMC's WS1 product (see hardware brochure) which includes 20 servers and 840 disks. This totals 6,452 lbs and 21 sq ft of floor space, compared to our 4,442 lbs and 12sqft.  Almost double the floor space and 50% heavier.  Better set aside some budget for that.
• Hardware is:  Less storage, less CPU, less dense, fixed server/disk ratios, and in 2 of 3 rack options, EMC is using non-standard oversized cabinets.    Can you feel your total cost of ownership increasing?
• EMC speaks to scalability, but storage appears to only be packaged in fixed rack increments with fixed CPU ratios.  From what is shared the only expansion path is buying another rack. That's not helpful to customers.  Pour more money into your TCO budget.
• Where is EMC getting the hardware? HP has industry standard components and the leading server/drive vendor in the market. EMC has to cobble together the hardware and software into a nice vendor lock-in proprietary bag of tricks.  Cha-ching.
• HP has a 3^rd-party partner program. First vendor to announce an offering is Ocarina Networks. They will provide software data reduction (compression and de-duplication). EMC is going down the proprietary software route.  (More on this in a follow-up post from my colleague Michael Callahan).
• Is Maui shipping? Nothing in the release or on the web site actually says it is available. Details?

EMC is famous for marketing-hype and spin without details. Does anyone else remember their WideSky initiative?  I can't help but think this is the same old story. I wonder if the relationship between names is any indication to where EMC's head is at?  

We are happy to go toe-to-toe with Atmos (Maui...Hulk...or whatever the name is) and continue to win deals.

Michael Callahan, Chief Technologist from our Enterprise NAS team will add his thoughts about the EMC software in another post later today.

P.S. I noticed a very interesting take on this from Stephen Foskett on his blog - take a look here.  His post got me wondering if the positioning conflict between VMware and Maui is why Diane Greene, the former VMware CEO left EMC.