The crack StorageMojo analyst team will be attending HP Discover next week in beautiful Barcelona. There is a new guard in the ESSN group now that Dave Donatelli has moved on. HP is going through a particularly tough product transition.

But, unlike EMC, HP is doing it with a much more mature product line in the 3PAR series. XtremeIO will be biting EMC customers for years as they discover the corner cases that no beta program – even one that lasted a year – would uncover.

The Storage Mojo take
The DEC StorageWorks brand and much of its engineering was absorbed into HP through the Compaq acquisition. I may have a bit of a soft spot for HP as my last five years at DEC was in the StorageWorks group.

Being intimately acquainted with the issues DEC faced selling storage informs the StorageMojo take on the issues that HP faces today. EMC is a sales organization with an R&D function attached. HP, like DEC, is too often the reverse.

I will be interested to hear how the new boss plans to address the traditional HP weaknesses in the storage arena. They have a golden opportunity with EMC’s transition to an all flash array. They can’t afford to waste it.

Comments welcome. Always happy to meet StorageMojo readers, so if you see me please say hello.