NetApp storage efficiency guarantee debunked

NetApp's response

EMC's counter to NetApp's Storage Efficiency Guarantee has been to cite a January report by Forrester Research, which claims that almost half (48 per cent) of organisations choose EMC storage for their virtualised environments.

NetApp considers the report questionable.

Delandere says the 124 survey respondents on which the survey is based is "a  fairly small sample to be quoting."

"If you're going to ask a question like that, you'd want to get a sizeable pool of data to get your answer," he said.

The survey does fail to break down how much of IBM and Dell's shares of the market are actually re-branded EMC or NetApp boxes, which could swing results wildly in favour of one vendor or the other. Forrester tracks IBM, which re-sells NetApp's storage at 25 per cent market share, while EMC reseller Dell has 6 per cent.

"We know the numbers are wrong, as we know how many VMWare customers are on board with us," said Delandere. "The results are so far out of reality, anyone who knows anything about storage would have to raise their eyebrows."

A spokesperson for Forrester Group said the survey was independent and not commissioned by any vendor.

McCallum says the figures only reflect similar reports by Goldman Sachs (42 per cent in August 2008) and IDC (43 per cent in December 2007) that confirm EMC is tracking at around the 40-50 per cent mark.

He also claims to have seen internal VMWare metrics showing that 48 per cent of the storage adaptors offered by VMWare to hook into its Site Recovery Manager product were for EMC lines of storage.

EMC is anxious to prove it has a larger share of VMWare business, McCallum said, because the storage vendor is "treated by VMware the same as any other company," despite EMC's part-ownership of the software company.

"If you rewind back to 2007, EMC and VMware went out of their way not to talk about each other for fear of alienation other VMware partners."

But as of January 2008, he said, EMC committed over 100 people to be solely dedicated to winning business around the integration of VMware and EMC.

"We committed to competing on the best of our merits," he said.