Storage wars

Partners say that, ultimately, the winners of these market share battles will be determined by the channel. The vendors can bash each other all they want but they just play into the hands of solution providers, says Mark Teter, chief technical officer of Advanced Systems Group, a US-based IBM, EMC and Sun partner.

'It gives us a chance to talk to our end-user customers about what the vendors says,' Teter says. 'It gives customers choices. Sometimes hearing about who is beating up who causes consternation with customers. There are so many partnerships and competing technologies. We're the voice of the customers.'

The real battle royale in the storage wars is between IBM and EMC. When IBM bragged about shipping its thousandth SAN Volume Controller storage virtualisation appliance, it used the occasion to blast EMC's virtualisation strategy as locking customers into EMC hardware to keep EMC's business model from collapsing.

IBM general manager Andy Monshaw also attacked its rival's relationship with Dell as proof of its lack of channel commitment. 'You can't have a channel like Dell and try to use your conventional business partners and hope for no conflict,' Monshaw says.

'Frankly, [EMC has] come out publicly and stated Dell is their preferred choice. So in a time of conflict, they will move to Dell.' EMC countered that it is the champion of open systems, with a virtualisation strategy that lets customers use their existing storage management software regardless of vendor, unlike IBM.

And despite its relationship with Dell, EMC's resellers are competing quite well, says John Koury, EMC's vice-president of channel marketing. 'It shows the power of the channel and the appetite of the channel partners that take training, provide value for their customers and provide value locally,' he says.

David Henderson, general manager of channels and alliances at EMC, says the vendor is committing to raising its level of consultancy with partners - encouraging partners to push more integrated offerings that comprise platforms, software and services as well as hardware. 'And our partners will enjoy increased rebates,' he adds.

'Three times more ... But part of it is due to integrating our last acquisition [not just hot times in storage].' Henderson freely admits the name of the game is to get resellers to sell more EMC gear, as opposed to other vendors' offerings, and preferably to lead with EMC. But the reality is that partners must sell other vendors too and EMC accepts that, he claims.

The main fight is between itself, IBM and HP, and eventually a winner will be found, like it was in 1992 when Cisco, 3Com and Bay Networks were duking it out in the networking space, he says. 'This sort of situation where you have three or four major vendors locked into a duel, it doesn't last forever,' Henderson says.