EMC reported that Centera now has 500+ customers when they introduced the Centera upgrade (350GB drives, faster processors, 1 GB ethernet links, CentraStar upgrade) earlier today. That's up from 150+ customers at around this time last year. Centera could easily have more than 1,000 customers by this time next year with most customers deploying Centeras over multiple years as they phase their existing systems into tiered storage architectures. That means that the annuity-like potential of NENG's Centera revenue stream should become more visible, all the more reason for NENG to use that high quality sales momentum to diversify its revenue base.
Here's a real-world look at how Centera fits into EMC's overall strategy. In most tiered storage deployments, Centera will most likely be the undisputed capacity leader, potentially accounting for as much as 50%-60% of total customer external disk capacity. This means robust unit growth which is very positive for NENG's volume manufacturing model which is currently at 50% of capacity in-house and 50% of contracted capacity at Sanmina.
EMC, on the other hand, is clearly counting on the fact that once customers invest in its storage management framework, they will most likely try to put as much disk as possible under the frame in much the same way that Symmetrix customers try to put as much disk capacity as they can once they invest in Symmetrix controller technology. The rapid growth of the long-term part of EMC's deferred revenues account suggest that more and more customers are willing to commit to multi-year deployment of EMC hardware, software and services. Again, note that Centera is expected to be the capacity leader in those multi-year tiered storage deployments.
Ohio Savings Bank has defined the following storage tiers:
High-End - Symmetrix DMX networked storage supports the bank's critical, revenue and service generating applications. Using EMC SRDF® (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility) and TimeFinder(TM) software, the bank replicates information at its primary data center to another Symmetrix DMX residing at a remote data center.
Mid-Tier - A CLARiiON CX600 Fibre Channel SAN provides consolidated storage to the bank's Exchange email and web servers, Microsoft.NET environment, and Sequel databases. EMC's MirrorView(TM) software provides data replication between CLARiiON CX600s at the primary and remote data centers. Ohio Savings Bank also utilizes a Celerra NAS gateway connected to a CLARiiON CX600 systems with both Fibre Channel and ATA disk drives for centralized file serving and cost-effective storage of imaged documents. EMC SAN Copy(TM), MirrorView, and Celerra Replicator(TM) software provide replication of data stored on the Celerra/CLARiiON CX600 to a Celerra NS600 at the remote site.
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Archive - Ohio Savings Bank will use EMC Centera Compliance Edition content-addressed storage (CAS) and LEGATO EmailXtender® software to store required email for three to seven years in the WORM-compliant protected format, as required by the SEC. The bank also will use LEGATO EmailXaminer(TM) software for sophisticated email monitoring and searching, as well LEGATO DiskXtender® software for automated policy-based management.
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Ohio Savings Bank is implementing EMC ControlCenter(TM) multi-platform storage resource management software to manage its entire 45TB storage infrastructure. With ControlCenter, the bank will automate labor-intensive storage management tasks such as reporting on storage utilization levels and trends across Symmetrix and CLARiiON, as well as internal storage residing on servers running HP-UX and Microsoft Windows NT.
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