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Random Reflections from EMC World 2014

By Scott Shimomura posted May 13, 2014 11:29 AM

  

What a week in Las Vegas! Jonathan Martin and his team at EMC delivered another spectacular event that always seems to feel like the center of the storage universe. It’s evolved over the years from a technical user event into a compass for understanding where the storage industry is going. The theme was “redefine” which was perfect given all of the hype and conversations around software defined-everything and IDC’s 3rd platform. It was clear from the first day keynote that EMC is all in on software-defined storage and flash even if it disrupts their traditional storage solutions.

 

The amount and depth of information in the general and technical sessions was awesome, if not overwhelming. Brocade had several sessions covering topics ranging from Cloud, IP, and Fibre Channel storage. Our VP of product management, Jack Rondoni, presented a technology overview of Brocade Fabric Vision that was very well attended. He provided a detailed session on the use cases and underlying technology for Brocade’s advanced monitoring, diagnostics, and management.

 

Jack’s session on “How SAN Monitoring Improves Application Availability & Performance”

 

 Jack session.jpg

 

 

Hello Fabric Vision

I had a great opportunity to meet with a bunch of customers and had many conversations in the Brocade booth about Brocade Fabric Vision. Now that EMC has certified FOS 7.2.0d, EMC customers have access to the Fabric Vision feature set. We had a remarkable demo in the booth that highlighted Monitoring Alerting Policy Suite (MAPS), Flow Vision, and ClearLink using Brocade Network Advisor. I can talk all day about Fabric Vision, but the demo just clicked with customers when they saw how easy it was to deploy pre-defined policies, perform granular diagnostics, and accelerate troubleshooting. The instrumentation we have added to our switches is real (not virtual) and it’s making a difference with our customers. The comment from customers I heard many times was “I have to update to 7.2 when I get back to office.”

 

Battle of the Booths

Brocade and Cisco were located across from each other at the entrance to the Solutions Arcade. Our graffiti wall was a big hit, our theatre presentations were packed, and our demo stations had waiting lines. We had a DCX 8510 on a rotating table, while Cisco put the MDS 9710 on a table that could barely contain it. The difference in size between the two chassis was clear (10 inches longer and almost twice the weight). It’s one thing to see pictures on a slide; it’s another thing to see it in person.  From my completely biased perspective, I thought our booth had more energy and lively engagements, so I am going to declare victory in the booth battle.

 

Here’s a shot of the Brocade booth ten minutes after the floor closed (still lots of lively discussion).

 

EMC world booth.jpg

 

Gen Cinco de Fibre Channel

Monday, May 5th drew to a close with competing parties at the Canonita at the Venetian. 

 

Cinco de Mayo.jpg

 

First up was Gen Cinco de Fibre Channel hosted by Brocade, followed by Cisco de Mayo hosted by… Cisco.  We used the party as an opportunity to spend time with industry analysts, bloggers, and others.  It seemed like everyone who covers storage was there along with some key friends from EMC. A great time was had by all as we sampled tequila and food. We had about twice as many people as planned and more people than Cisco, so I am declaring the Brocade won Cinco de Mayo.

 

Summary

In summary, EMC World 2014 was a huge success for EMC and Brocade. It’s a long and exhausting week, but it’s the one can’t-miss event of the year. With the death of Storage Networking World and other storage shows, there is no other event in the industry that matches the energy and focus on storage. Congrats to EMC on another great event!

 

Follow Brocade on Twitter @BRCDcomm

Follow me on Twitter @scottshimo

 


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