* HP revamps its storage story
This is the second in a two-part report on HP’s StorageWorks Conference, which was held last week in Las Vegas. Last time, we looked at the products HP announced at the show. Today, we take a look at HP’s storage strategy behind the announcements.
First, let’s put some context around HP’s storage business. In its second fiscal quarter ended April 30, HP’s revenue from networked storage was down 6% over last year – clearly not a good thing. But let’s keep some perspective here: the networked storage business is a part of HP’s Enterprise Storage and Servers Group, which at $4.2 billion saw its numbers and profitability increase 6% over the same quarter a year ago. And lest anyone be tempted to take up a collection on HP’s behalf, it might be worth knowing that the company as a whole estimates its third quarter revenue will come in at just over $20.3 billion.
Also, keep in mind that when we are dealing with HP (and with competitors EMC and IBM), we are talking about a company that likely spends more on R&D than the annual revenue of most of its competitors (Dell, EMC, HDS and IBM excepted).
So much for the background. How will HP move forward? The company plans to grow its storage business by focusing on three broad technology areas: information lifecycle management (ILM), storage grids (see the links below for our series of newsletter on storage grids), and data protection products and services.
There are two guiding principles that HP hopes will help it achieve its goals. First, HP will continue to develop integrated, standards-based management products that will eventually provide interoperability between servers, storage and networks. Second, it will look outside the company as well as within to make sure it can provide products in a timely manner.
The logic is both straightforward and internally consistent. ILM potentially touches just about every aspect of data storage, and when it sits atop grid-based storage ILM can be expected to help large organizations get maximum value from their storage devices.
Further, a key issue with both ILM and grids concerns the frequent planned movement of data to more cost-appropriate devices, and the constant provisioning and reprovisioning of storage assets so that their value can be spread among a wide variety of users and processes. Because of that, both ILM and grid must rely heavily on an automated infrastructure to provide these services in a cost-effective manner. A consequence of this necessary commitment to automation is the requirement to interoperate across a wide variety of devices and software, and the only way to ensure that is by using standards-based management techniques. HP is able to do much of this now because it often turns to partners to get technology initiatives out the door in a timely fashion.
By partnering, HP is at the forefront of technology leadership when it comes to standards-based storage management. I expect HP to make good progress integrating its storage management offerings with its OpenView enterprise management software, as both are also increasingly standards-based.
We will have to wait and see if HP’s new hardware collaborations produce successful results, but the early indications (provided by last week’s spate of announcements – see my previous column) are that it is rolling products out at a faster clip and, hopefully, adding plenty of value for both its channel partners and customers.
*** If you will be attending the Storage World Conference in Long Beach Calif., June 7-9, please stop by and say hi. I’ll be running two sessions at the conference, a panel on SMB Storage on June 8 (starring senior execs from EMC, FalconStor, HP, IBM and several other leading vendors) and a round table discussion on June 9 on the topic of “How to create the best disaster recovery plan” (featuring top IT executives who will share real-world experiences). Alternatively, you can stop by and try to skewer me at one of the “analyst face-to-face” meetings. Feel free to take your best shot.
Check out the conference agenda at https://www.storageworldconference.com/agenda/
