EMC buying TwinStrata to put on VMAX.

The StorageMojo take
First of all I hope Nicos and John made out like bandits. Not likely without a bidding war – I haven’t heard of one – but they did a good job building TS.

One of the attractions for EMC is that TS supports many clouds. The master of lock-in gives customers a choice when it won’t get the business anyway.

The deeper message: we can’t compete with cloud storage, so we’ve decided to make money supporting it. Expect value-added features that only work on VMAX, probably in cooperation with Google and Microsoft.

But what about the rest of the industry? It’s a good thing. EMC validation means that customers who wouldn’t consider the idea will now have to go out and look at competitors.

Six months from now cloud gateway will be on every checklist. Why not?

Thus companies who already offer gateways, like Avere, stand to gain. Their value proposition is so much more than cheaper cloud storage. If they can get a prospect to sit still for 15 minutes they have an opportunity.

No doubt about it, cloud storage is in the mainstream. In case you hadn’t heard.

Courteous comments welcome, of course. I’ve done work for TwinStrata in the past and am working on a project for them now. At least I hope I still am.