I’ve just been reading Greg Knieriemen’s post over at iknerd.com on the ending of Sun/Oracle’s OEM agreement with Hitachi to resell their high end storage arrays. On the one hand I’m surprised by the announcement; on the other I’m not.
Sun have resold Hitachi for some time under the 9990V and 9985V brand names. These are no more than rebadged devices with Hitachi code and software under the covers. From memory, I believe the only technical change is the cabinet door. I have installed Sun supplied Hitachi technology in the past. Sun provided no added value to the process – in fact when we encountered a microcode bug, Sun’s lack of knowledge hindered our problem resolution process.
I’m struggling to see what Sun/Oracle will replace the Hitachi brands with. All of the original StorageTek disk array products are effectively dead. Sun’s Unified Storage Server (7000 series) is a great box but not enterprise class, neither are Sun/Oracle’s other offerings, all based around modular storage. I can see three options:
- Larry doesn’t want to replace Hitachi’s products. They weren’t owned by Oracle so didn’t suit his plans, so they’re gone.
- Use Exadata. OK, that doesn’t give the customer much flexibility in their datacentre.
- Find a new partner. Perhaps after all the hype we hear about Netapp in Oracle’s datacentres this is the time for the switch. Maybe we are going to see Netapp as the preferred enterprise storage partner.
To be honest, no option seems likely. I guess time will tell.
Oh, nearly forgot, there is of course the Pillar option, but I don’t see that one happening either.
5 Responses to Enterprise Computing: Sun/Oracle Kicks Hitachi To The Kerb
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The Oracle-NetApp relationship could be strong.
Or Larry might have gone on stage changed the name of the Sun 7000 to the ZFS Storage Appliance and said his box was better than “NetApps” box.
http://storagezilla.typepad.com/storagezilla/2010/01/the-oracle-netapp-war.html
Which is exactly what he did the day after the Sun deal closed.
Ready, fire, aim!
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Anyone think Pillar maybe?! Hello!? It is Larry’s other company after all.
I guarantee it will NOT be Netapp. Has anybody out there really run Sun OS with Oracle on Netapp? Well, it’s quite a frail endeavor indeed. HDS knows performance and this is the platform of choice for a speed hungry environment like that on Sun chipsets and Solaris. This feeds right along with Sun’s lack of a clear storage vision. I believe this company suffered from too many competing idealogies within it’s corporate being. Their storage purchases have proven ineffectual and has left previous customers holding an empty bag. So this is what Sun should have and needs to do to survive as a storage entity:
1) Sell Off ALL of their storage brands or eliminate ALL of them
2) Resell ALL HDS gear from top to bottom for disk.
3) Resell STK gear as Sun from somebody who actually knows how to run a storage company.
Sun owns some talented storage gearheads. They do NOT have storage leaders or visionaries to help guide and nurture their talent or attract a larger cadre of talent.