VSPEX – The rebirth of the Mainframe/Mini in x86 form?

EMC has trademarked a new product name: VSPeX. So what the heck is it?

Alternative: slow news day at El Reg.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that with EMC’s hardware and coding chops, and direct line into VMware that purpose built virtual appliance coupled with the appropriate connectivity and storage are the next evolution of their business model. There is a lot more competition in the storage space these days, sure EMC is the top dog, but a lot of that is built of their dominance since the Sym days. As the other players catch up and surpass EMC in terms of functionality and value add, they will need to differentiate themselves and in turn create an even larger revenue model.

If you think about it, a converged platform, other than VCE/VBlock etc makes sense since it can be bolted into their existing storage product line. Just look at what they are doing with Greenplum, its the precursor to the VM appliance. Imagine a VMAX with built in ESXi and you have essentially the rebirth of the mainframe market for the x86 space. Scale on demand type delivery, as well as built in replication/dr, snaps, clones, etc. etc. Converge all the features of Enterprise storage and virtualization into an appliance coupled with their huge install base, and you have what Oracle wants to be but is incapable of becoming (since they unceremoniously killed SUN).

Virtrualization has been around for a long time, many of the features we use within the x86 virtrualization space have been available in the Mainframe/Mini/Unix space for some time.

Now the big one, does EMC go after Cisco? The long rumor has always been that EMC wants to buy a network stack, is Cisco too expensive? Personally, I wouldn’t go that route, I’d look at Extreme Networks given their Diamond series is the shit, and it could be had for a far cheaper price point without all the baggage of merging a huge company like Cisco into an equally huge company like EMC.

Of course, I could be crazy in thinking this. Wouldn’t be the first time.

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1 Response to VSPEX – The rebirth of the Mainframe/Mini in x86 form?

  1. Pete says:

    SO.. EMC liked Hitachi’s VSP naming so much they bought the name? lol

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