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VMware heads for mass consumption, kills RAID

01.12.2006
VMworld 2006 is history, but I'm still cogitating on what I saw there in the City of the Angels. For example, I find it intriguing that this show drew an attendance of nearly 7,000, whereas EMCWorld held earlier this year in Boston drew maybe 5,000. Do those numbers say anything statistically significant? Probably not. But what it says to me is that virtualization is a bigger opportunity in terms of mass deployment than enterprise storage, and now EMC owns a significant position in both markets. "What a gift from above this acquisition is turning out to be!" could be one conclusion. Or, "EMC has a tiger-by-the-tail." That could be another conclusion given its position as an independent subsidiary with separate sales, marketing, R&D, etc. At this point in time, I could go either way.

For me, the high point of the show turned out to be a panel discussion on the future of virtualization that featured several academics. One spoke of the possibility of virtualizing user interfaces for applications that are intended for mass consumption. That was an "ah-ha!" moment worth the price of admission. It has me thinking about the mass consumption of virtualization, which leads me to another thought: the mass deployment of embedded virtualized processes. Windows was the first example of the mass distribution of a virtualized process known as virtual memory. The concept spawned a behemoth.

Since I normally think in storage terms, I can imagine the mass deployment of virtualized storage controllers. The heyday of RAID controllers is coming to an end. Ubiquitously available multicore processors, designed with virtualization in mind, will soon dominate the storage controller landscape. Those plus VMware-or, if competitors have their way, Xen, or Virtual Iron, or whatever Microsoft ultimately delivers as "Veridian"-equals the end of the RAID controller as we know it.

That fearless prediction, if you're willing to follow my logic, puts EMC in an interesting spot. Ever since Clayton Christennsen struck fear into the hearts of insanely successful companies, CEOs have been looking back over their shoulders for an approaching disruptor. EMC has lived long and well off of essentially the same Symmetrix storage controller and scale-up view of storage. It's been successfully enhanced and repackaged, but it's still basically the same to me. I've often marveled at EMC's ability to defy gravity. Now, when the time comes, Symmetrix can be retired gradually, and EMC execs can sleep well knowing that they own a pretty good piece of an approaching disruptor. Given VMware's independence, VMware is positioned to help any and all RAID controllers virtualize and evolve.

John Webster is the principal IT adviser for research firm Illuminata Inc. He is also the author of numerous articles and white papers on a wide range of topics and is the co-author of the book Inescapable Data: Harnessing the Power of Convergence (IBM Press, 2005). Webster can be reached at jwebster@illuminata.com.