George, Would appreciate your opinion on this curve ball. Thanks in advance...
Sun is in talks for Hitachi storage
Source: the451
Date: 03 May 2001
Hitachi Data Systems and Sun are cooking up a deal on storage, the net of which would be that Sun resells Hitachi's high-end array technology in some shape or form. The deal is not done yet, but "we are talking," HDS COO David Roberson told the451.
There's a head of steam already building around speculation about such a deal. "Where there's smoke there's fire," said Roberson, calling another OEM deal this year for Hitachi's Lightning storage array "probable."
Sun is under increasing pressure to put in place a storage strategy that works and has a high-end element to it. Mark Canepa, Sun's new storage chief, didn't rule out partnering with Hitachi when asked about the company's plans last week.
The competition isn't sweating, however. The only comment on such a deal from EMC chief technical officer Jim Rothnie was, "Just look at [what happened to] our Hewlett-Packard deal," referring to the acrimonious unraveling of EMC's reseller relationship with HP. HP is now Hitachi's most important OEM.
If the deal comes off, it will be interesting to see how Sun is able to differentiate the HDS technology from the version of the Lightning array that HP sells under its brand.
HDS's storage business, now limbering up to become a separate company, wants 50% of its business to come from indirect sales within two years, compared with 30% now (although that excludes the HP relationship). HDS expects to do $400-500 million in revenue in its first quarter, which began in April. That is less than it did in the previous quarter but more than the $250m it did in the same period last year. It does 20% of its business in the S/390 mainframe market.
HDS's storage unit is the fastest-growing piece of Hitachi Ltd's business, and Roberson said he expects profits to grow significantly.
Roberson said HDS is now pulling out all the stops to win the race to provide users with storage virtualization software, which lets them not only see but also manage different vendors' equipment on one storage area network. The software will also enable companies to keep fewer copies of files than they currently do across different networks and systems, Roberson said. It's at least 18 months out, he forecasts.
The three-pronged approach combines the company's own development with work from software partner Veritas, plus additional technology it will get by partnering with or acquiring any of the half-dozen of so storage software startups that it's currently evaluating.
At $0.15-0.20 per megabyte, HDS's storage is less expensive than EMC's, but more costly than IBM's. HDS estimates two-thirds of its subsystems now ship with additional SAN equipment attached to them, such as Brocade switches.
Hmmm. I guess Purple2 can't be that good? Any thoughts out there? Anyone going to buy HDS on the IPO? |
