EMC playing catch up with disk library, claims Quantum
EMC playing catch up with disk library, claims Quantum
The introduction of EMC's new disk library system into the market, which it says mimics tape backup but with much better performance, has prompted one rival to suggest that EMC is mimicking its approach to the backup market.
Mike Sparkes, Asia-Pacific marketing manager at Quantum, said of the new development: "EMC have been selling its Clariion disk systems for the last year or so with an extra array of cheaper ATA disk, which it has been telling users is the ideal repository for backups. Quantum has had a backup product for a couple of years now (DX30) that has been particularly designed for that role. What we are seeing, with EMC taking this route with its new disk library, is a validation of what we have been doing for the last two years."
Rather than feel threatened by EMC encroaching into its territory, Sparkes said that Quantum was happy that EMC was squaring up to it. At least, that's the message it wants to broadcast.
"We are quite pleased, as EMC is a major player and obviously carries a lot of market share in storage and has a high profile, but we feel their product is not as complete or as mature as ours, so we believe we can compete head to head with them with a superior product, which we are very happy about."
"EMC has been quite anti-tape for a while now. They have been saying that disk is the appropriate repository for everything, but quite obviously with this disk library system they are bringing out, which has an archive to tape requirement, it is an acknowledgement that tape is not going to disappear."
Mark Heers, product marketing manager ANZ, EMC, did not dispute that its new Clariion Disk Library system did not give more that a nod and a wink to Quantum's DX series.
"They have a product that basically allows a disk subsystem to mimic a tape. That is consistent with our message."
Heers also sought to clarify what he felt was a misconception of EMC's message on using tape for storage purposes.
"We are not saying that tape is on its way out as such. What people need to be very cautious of is what they are using tape for and what they should be using it for. What we suggest to customers is that for a lot of their data, tape doesn't allow them to recover it quickly enough.
"We understand that a lot of customers have been writing to tape for a long time, but what they can do now to get a significant improvement is to put a Clariion there, so that the system thinks its writing to a tape drive, but they get the performance and availability attributes of a disk system."
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