* Reader responses to recent newsletter on EMC's corporate strategy
A few weeks back, while commenting on EMC’s corporate strategy, I expressed the opinion (still strongly held) that “the group for those of us in storage to watch is most definitely VMware, which continues to play a key role in enabling EMC to manage across the enterprise.”
If you have a mainframe background, you know that virtualization has been with us since the 1960’s. If, like me, you are a former DEC or Prime Computer employee (“DECies” and “Primates”) you also know that in the late 1970’s the technology began to move “downwards” into what eventually became the mini- and supermini-computer segment, providing many mainframe computer shops with a near-death experience. This happened because virtualization in its several forms allowed users to run more than one operating system (or multiple instances of the same operating system) on a single physical machine, safely isolating the operations on each virtual machine so that problems were localized and resources (memory in the beginning, other attributes later) might be shared. It was and continues to be an effective and efficient way to extract value from a hardware investment through intelligent use of software.
I want to share with you the results of several responses to that newsletter, plus a thread of discussions on the same topic that occurred during meetings with several vendors at Storage Networking World in Orlando.
During all of these a common theme began to appear – one of annoyance, exasperation and frustration with VMware, a company whose alliance group is understaffed, and which apparently has little insight into how to deal with smaller vendors. VMware leaves you with the impression that, at best, smaller companies are an afterthought when it comes to being included within the VMware ecosystem.
Alas, it seems that my enthusiasm for VMware – and apparently, your interest in working with them – far outstrips VMware’s capabilities to work with you. This is a pity; they are a key player in the enterprise, one that could deliver far greater value to customers and EMC shareholders if they were a bit more capable in their outreach to storage vendors.
VMware can be forgiven for having little expertise when it comes to working with storage companies; after all, up until recently their playing field has been application servers, not storage devices and storage software. The unhelpful attitude that they revealed to several of the vendors I spoke with (one actually used the term “pompous” in describing them) is hard to excuse. As part of a leading storage provider, however – and EMC now has a fine rep when it comes to being an alliance partner – this is a significant shortcoming, and one that should be addressed immediately.
Should you partner with them? Typically, companies would do this for the purpose of getting on their vendor compatibility list, but you’ll have to decide for yourself if it is worth the effort at this point.
Here’s a reliable tool for determining a company’s commitment to its present set of partners. Go to the Web page with the partner logos and click on a few of them. It’s a pretty good bet that if the link just goes to the partner homepage, that relationship is at best pretty tenuous. If, on the other hand, there is some useful information at the end of the link, these two are serious about supporting one another’s business.
The VMware partner site is located here. By all means visit the site, but go there as an informed tourist. If you’re a start-up or even one of the well-established but smaller vendors, don’t be unduly influenced by the large number of logos on their partner Web page – if you look closely, these “partner links” go to the companies’ home pages. Be prepared to take a number and wait. VMware is likely to take care of them before they wait on you.
