My Way Or The Highway!

Choosing between proprietary and open solutions

MARK: I just finished writing a monster article about EMC's new hardware and software. Are my fingers still crooked from all those keystrokes?

HAL: What's EMC up to?

MARK: Mostly upgrades to their existing Symmetrix system, but nothing genuinely new on the hardware side. It's all aimed, both hardware and software, at enhancing what EMC is calling "E-Infostructure."

HAL: Whoa! Another "e-" thing. They're multiplying like rabbits. Are they going to change the name of the company to "E-MC"?

MARK: Not today and not tomorrow, but anything could happen.

HAL: I know that what EMC is doing must be important, but I've gotten several e-mails--

MARK: Ooooh! You said an word!

HAL: They're stuck in my brain like taffy in my teeth. Anyway, IBM has been sending me email saying, "Pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain."

MARK: IBM wants to be the "man behind the curtain" itself.

HAL: I think we should explain that IBM's "Shark" system competes head-on against Symmetrix, but it's come later to market than EMC's offerings. So IBM is telling anybody who'll listen not to trust EMC's performance or marketing claims.

MARK: IBM insists that it's eating EMC's lunch--or at least the salad and the entr[acute(e}]e--but EMC is not to be outdone. EMC is claiming to have the world's fastest storage system with three to four times the performance of the competition.

HAL: "Competition" meaning "Shark"?

MARK: Right, and IBM claims that Shark is the fastest in the industry.

HAL: I'm shocked! We're in the middle of a pi--excuse me!--a spitting contest.

MARK: The real brick that IBM is throwing has "interoperability" stenciled all over it.

HAL: I thought that was inherent in any big system like this. What does IBM mean by "interoperability"?

MARK: IBM claims--and I think they have some justification there--that its newest improvements to Shark hardware and software are specifically tied to the Symmetrix architecture. You've got to have Symmetrix to run EMC's new hardware anyway because Symmetrix isn't an open system.

HAL: Yet why would any customer split the difference? I always figure that, in really big systems like these, you're better off with a single vendor.

MARK: The only justification I know to be locked into a single vendor is the flatly pragmatic one: It works. My problem with that, however, is that going with a new or second vendor means rendering your existing hardware investment obsolete and doing a "fork-lift" upgrade.

HAL: Nice metaphor, Mark. "Fork-lift," meaning that you toss out all old hardware and pick up all-new stuff from the loading-dock.

MARK: At which time, your chief financial officer commits seppuku--

HAL: Hey, Mr. Erudite! Everybody else calls it "hara-kiri."

MARK: Actually "everybody" calls it "hairy-carry," but seriously, that kind of upgrade is very hard to justify on a return-on-investment basis.

HAL: Yeah. Even the average computer user hates to throw out an old PC, even though the RAM is measured in kilobytes and the hard disk in megabytes.

MARK: Oh, I still have my old Morrow MDT-20 system somewhere and, if I fired it up, it'd launch in CP/M.

HAL: Well, I don't still have my first computer--a Zenith Z-89 from twenty years ago--but I do have my first laptop--an NEC-8201, which was better than the RadioShack Model 100, because it--

MARK: We could wallow in nostalgia all day long. Come back to the topic at hand. IBM makes their case very well. They point out that, for customers, obsoleting an investment is not an "escape" but a "closed door."

HAL: Their e-mails are full of colorful phrases, but the underlying point seems to be: stay away from EMC and come back home to Big Blue. Right?

MARK: Not only that, but IBM claims that their message is, in fact, being received and that they're making inroads into EMC's customer base with their interoperable Shark.

HAL: This is what happens when two companies dissolve a partnership that had worked well for both of them for years and start competing against each other. EMC used to sell IBM hardware and IBM used to sell EMC systems, But their contract expired last year and now they're so mad at each other that both of them are telling trade journalists like us not to trust what the other one is saying.

MARK: As if we've never heard extreme claims before!

HAL: Maybe they could take a lesson from us--you and me. We "agree to disagree" about many issues, but we always read each other's colunms.

MARK: Neither of these companies has ever been adept at learning either from history or from example, but there are solid justifications for committing your operation to a proprietary architecture, especially when it meets customer demands. I'll take that point of view and, if you agree with me, e-mail me at [e-mail].

HAL: For the sake of argument, I'll say that you're better off with multiple vendors and an interoperable solution. If that's your preference too, e-mail me at [e-mail].