By Calvin Zito

May 5th 1999 was a huge day for HP storage - it was ten years ago today that we announced our OEM relationship with Hitachi Limited, Japan and introduced the XP Disk Array.  I was part of the team that brought the XP Disk Array to market and it remains one of the most exciting times I've ever had working at HP.  It was also one of the most stressful times of my life.

In 1997, I had taken a job with another part of HP in Colorado Springs and after about 18 months away from storage, decided in late 1998 that I really wanted to come back to Boise and to work in storage.  The day I returned to HP storage, I was pulled into the XP Disk Array program team.  It was a highly confidential program and there were a lot of people in HP storage that didn't know what we were doing.  We had even gone to the extent of moving an R&D team off-site in Roseville, CA to ensure the confidentiality of the program.  The work I did was incredibly demanding.  I remember working several 24 hour days, regularly starting my work day at 4 AM and wrapping up well into the evening.  Personally, my wife was also pregnant with our second child (who was coming in mid-June that year) and we were starting to build a house as we were living in a temporary apartment.  I wouldn't suggest that anyone try to juggle all that at once.

One of my roles was to work with to our server divisions (our HP3000 and HP9000) about the coming XP Disk Array.  Since HP was reselling another vendor's high-end product, they needed to be in a position to integrate the XP into their offerings.  One of the more challenging programs to integrate with was our Five 9's program.  We had a strong leadership position with Unix-based high availability solutions and achieving 99.999% uptime was no small feat in 1999.  I spent a lot of time in Cupertino leading up to our announcement.

The HP storage enterprise brand we introduced on May 5^th was HP SureStore E.  Our tape business was already using HP SureStore and we wanted to differentiate between the two so we added the "E" to the brand to signify enterprise.   We used the announcement to start a big push around "Stress Free Storage".  In my opinion, it really was a very intelligent, well thought out brand.  The XP Disk Array exemplified the meaning of "Stress Free Storage" with a stress free guarantee and we even called our support center for the XP "Stress Free Central". 

Our announcement on May 5 was a huge event.  We took one of the busiest places on the planet and transformed it into a peaceful, stress free zone.  We rented a vacant building in Manhattan across the street from Grand Central Station.  There were palm trees, an oasis, and Jamaican music playing.  We had a NYC radio station broadcasting that it was a stress free day and we gave away free cab rides in Manhattan.  NYC mayor Rudi Giuliani came to the event and declared that it was "Stress Free Day" and actress/model Lauren Hutton talked about stress free practices.  On the street, we had people giving away Adirondack chairs, sun glasses, kites, and other "stress free" themed items.  It was without a doubt the biggest storage event that we've ever had.

One last story - the product's original name was the HP SureStore E Disk Array MC256.  The "MC" stood for Mission Critical.  I remember being in a meeting with our worldwide launch team about a month before the announcement and someone mistakenly wrote "HP SureStore E MC256 Disk Array" on the white board.  Our European HP Storage business manager pointed out that if others wrote the name wrong too, we had ourselves an "E MC256".  None of the management team seemed too concerned and said that it was too late to change the name.  A few days after the announcement, one competitor took offense to the name and filed an injunction to have the name changed.   It took us about 2 days to change the product family to the XP Disk Array. 

This day in 1999 really set the stage for the direction of HP StorageWorks.  And so it goes today.

Happy Anniversary to the XP Disk Array!  Not many products can boast of a 10 year history and the XP Disk Array has been a great success for us. 

(P.S. Thanks to Dave Lobato who now works in IPG for helping me fill in some of the gaps of my fading memory.  Dave was the launch manager for our May 5, 1999 announcement).

Tweet this!