Emulex Blog: Market Mantras

The Ironman of Network Convergence

Posted November 12th, 2009 by Shaun Walsh

Screen shot 2009-11-12 at 10.13.10 AMThis week, both Dell‘Oro Group and IT Brand Pulse released their first reports on network convergence market share for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Emulex is the leader of the market for the first three quarters of this new market triathlon. Yes, triathlon, not marathon, because you can’t just be good at one event here to win. You must be able to swim, bike and run, or, in the IT world, you have be a leader in IP, iSCSI and FCoE to win this race. Most of you who have met me know that I am hardly a tri-athlete, but that does not mean that Emulex does not compete just as hard as these athletes in our own three-event race in the IT world.

Emulex Is at the Top of the Leader Board

According to the numbers, Emulex leads in both revenue, 60.1%, and ports, 70%, over QLogic, Intel and Brocade in this early phase of the market. As we move into the second phase of the market, we know that, OneConnect, our tri-athlete Universal Converged Network Adapter (UCNA), will outdistance the single-event specialists in IP (Intel/Broadcom) or FCoE (QLogic/Brocade). The reason is simple: OneConnect provides full three-protocol hardware offload for IP, iSCSI and FCoE on a single platform; it provides a pay-as-you-go feature to lower 10GbE deployment costs; and it provides these differentiated features universally for servers with Local Area Network on Motherboard (LOM), mezzanine and adapter form factors. If you look at how IBM has implemented their virtual fabric solutions on Emulex OneConnect, they have built a solution that lowers costs and improves performance and flexibility for IT managers. This is the first of many innovations based on our industry-leading technology and implementations.
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QLogic’s Cool HBA Technology Gets Some New Bling… a Heat Sink

Posted November 3rd, 2009 by Shaun Walsh

Always the technology fashionistas, QLogic has added some “bling” to its new 8Gb/s quad-port Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) (QLE2564) – two shiny new heat sinks. “Heat sinks?” we asked. You can only imagine our surprise! For the past 18 months, QLogic has been touting its “Cool HBA Technology.” The theory of this highly touted feature was that QLogic 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs did not need a heat sink for reliable operation, but thermal images, such as those below, show that they really do:

qlogic_compared

What is most surprising about this sudden shift is that it took QLogic so long to catch up with the design best practices which Emulex and the rest of the industry have been leveraging since the beginning.

The fact remains that heat sinks are vital to achieving enterprise class reliability and are one of the best ways to cool devices in today’s high-density computing environments. As you can see in the images below, it has taken QLogic over 18 months to truly achieve its “Cool HBA Technology,” and even then, only after following Emulex’s lead.

qlogic_compared2

So why is cooler better? It’s simple. Cooler operating adapters mean greater reliability – of significant importance to data center administrators, as properly cooled components have a longer operating life, better system reliability and greater Storage Area Network (SAN) availability, each critical considerations in blade server environments. The cooler operating Emulex 8Gb/s Fibre Channel I/O controller translates into 166% greater reliability when compared to QLogic’s QLE2562 HBA.

The real question QLogic customers and partners have to be asking now is “what about all those QLogic 8Gb/s cards in the field which have no heat sink?”

To learn more, check out the following:

Emulex Labs: Sometimes, Being Hot Isn’t So Cool: http://www.emulex.com/emulexlabs/?p=14

The Effects of Heat on Electronic Circuits and Devices: http://www.youtube.com/EmulexVideo#play/uploads/17/AQOaNX9C6JE

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The Preseason Is Over: Winning the Share Game

Posted October 29th, 2009 by Shaun Walsh

Screen shot 2009-10-29 at 10.10.57 AMThis week, we announced General Availability of the OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapter (UCNA) and OneCommand Manager, our network convergence management framework.

Today’s blog is not about the product, but rather the launch process, contrasted to the real season, when games count. I know we are supposed to be a global company, and I should be probably be using analogies to what the rest of the world considers to be football (soccer) versus NFL football, but it is NFL football season here in the U.S., so please bear with me.

Training Camp

Product launches are much like getting ready for the NFL season. You hope that the players have worked out during the off-season to be ready for training camp. If they are not, then you put them on a rigorous get-in-shape regimen and drive them hard to get ready for the season. You look at the moves other teams (competitors) have made, new strategies they are likely to implement and how they will defend against you. When they attack your company, your products, your history, your future, it is all fair game during the season. Just ask the Cowboys’ Tony Romo– I bet he wishes he never dated Jessica Simpson or brought her to a game!

The Preseason with Analysts and Press

The preseason is the right time to wring out the game plan and see if your story, products and messages resonate or get ridiculed. Sometimes this is a humbling process, and often it is a fun one, but it is always educational. You learn quickly what puts people to sleep, what they find intriguing and what you wish you never said. This is a vital part of the launch process, because it really helps separate the signal from the noise.

The Launch Event

The stands are filled and the crowd is roaring. The ball is about to be kicked off and you are on stage, or more likely, webcast, these days. The team is tense, tired and excited, all at the same time. The months of nights, weekends and long hours are about to be put to use. For the OneConnect and OneCommand launch, we kicked off in a big way with three global events on three continents in 24 hours, starting in Frankfurt at SNW, in New York at our investor relations analyst day and in Beijing at our channel partner conference.

Trash Talk: Time to Put Up

Trash talk is essential and integral to competition in every game, and there has been plenty of that leading up to this launch. We all jockey for position and leadership in the market, but that time has passed and it is time to stop talking and start playing.

Trash Talk #1: Emulex is late to market.

Game Day Reality: We are right where we want to be, on target for the major 10GbE server transition.

Trash Talk #2: The product does not exist.

Game Day Reality: You can buy it now in the channels and from IBM. Did they think this was really a competitive strategy, since we qualify with the same OEMs? Our competitors knew this was wrong.

Trash Talk #3: They don’t own the chip.

Game Day Reality: The world’s biggest OEMs have qualified our OneConnect product for 10Gb network interface card (NIC), iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) uses (see the IBM Web site). The only people that seem to have a problem with our product are our competitors. Who do you want to listen to? Besides you really didn’t expect them to say nice things about us, right?

For me, the reality check is to look at the “quality of the trash talking.” If the only things our competitors can talk trash about have nothing to do with the product features, capabilities or functions, they can trash talk all they want. To me, this means that they don’t have competitive advantages where it counts—in their products or business model. Maybe their products are trash, and all they have is talk?

It’s the Final Score that Counts

We have said this many times: the network convergence market is not going to happen overnight. This year has been the year of OEM qualifications, and 2010 will be the year of network convergence program pilots and budgeting, and the market transition will kick off with production deployments as we move into 2011. The pre-season is over and the real game begins now. We won’t know the final score for a while. It is time to start working for the market share playoffs. In 2006, when asked if his Pittsburgh Steelers could win the Super Bowl, coach Bill Cohwer replied, “I like our chances.” That is how I feel about the network convergence market. We are prepared, we have had a great pre-season, we have the right product, at the right time, with the right partners and the best business model. So yeah, I like our chances.

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Six Questions to Ask before You Commit to a QLogic Converged Network Adapter

Posted August 18th, 2009 by Shaun Walsh

As many of you know, QLogic recently took a left turn on their converged network adapter (CNA) strategy with the purchase of NetXen. As with every fork in the road, they really have created a question about where they are going. We realize that, as they did not have a product strategy that gave them full three-protocol offload for IP, iSCSI and FCoE on a single card they had to do something, but the choice creates more questions than it answers. On the top of the list for potential CNA customers are a number of questions:

1. What card should I buy?

  • a. Commentary – The first, second-generation CNA, or the second, second-generation CNA? QLogic now has the QLE8100, which they recently announced as their single-chip CNA, which is good, but then they bought NetXen and have the NetXen-based card, now sold as the QLE3100 series. Which one is the future?
  • b. Emulex Position – Emulex has a single product line for our OneConnect single-chip Universal CNAs (UCNA). We won’t force you to guess what the right path forward is, as the answer should be simple and clear.

2. When will you have full three-protocol offload capabilities for IP, iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)?

  • a. Commentary – The QLE8100 has offload for FCoE, but uses extra CPU cycles to run software-based iSCSI drivers and forces the CPU to reduce virtual machines (VMs) per server by running software-based IP. Meanwhile, the QLE3100 provides offload for IP and iSCSI, but not FCoE. The software drivers for FCoE are public domain and don’t have a “real” company behind them. Would you like to run your enterprise-class storage on that type of Fibre Channel platform?
  • b. Emulex Position – Two out of three is not good enough for the enterprise. Our OneConnect UCNAs use our vEngine technology to provide full three-protocol CPU offload that maximizes server virtualization and consolidation. Our UCNA FCoE support is based on the most trusted, most interoperable, most reliable enterprise-class Fibre Channel stack in the industry.

3. Will I have a single management interface for network convergence?

  • a. Commentary – As noted before, QLogic has their current storage area network SANsurfer management tool for the QLE8100, and now has a second one for QLE3100, the NetXen-based product line. Which one will be adopted going forward? When, if or will they be merged? Will you lose features you like in the transition?
  • b. Emulex Position – Invariably, customers will lose something they like in this transition, and at a minimum, it will require learning a new management tool. Our Unified management framework, OneCommand, will provide a single tool for all of your network convergence needs and requirements.

4. Which card/product line will get the development resources?

  • a. Commentary – The biggest trouble for IT managers during this kind of product line bifurcations is guessing which product line will get the development team’s bandwidth to fix bugs, drive new features and provide OS, hypervisor and applications support, and which one will be pushed aside.
  • b. Emulex Position – We make it simple for our customers. Our UCNA strategy is simple and clear: OneConnect hardware, OneCommand software management.

5. To heat sink or not to heat sink?

  • a. Commentary – QLogic has gone out of its way to point out that their 8Gb host bus adapters (HBAs) and single-chip CNAs do not use a heat sink for cooling, and they have tried to take Emulex to task for using a heat sink on our card. We have used heat sinks because they make cards more reliable. But now the QLE3100 uses a heat sink, so you have to wonder which side of the heat sink debate QLogic is on? To sink or not to sink?
  • b. Emulex Position – The use of a heat sink is a proven and simple way to make all electronics more reliable and easy to cool. If you want to learn more, check out this video link. Like their product lines, QLogic’s mind seems to be split about this simple engineering concept. With decades of experience, we know what it takes to be enterprise-reliable and maximize required cooling.

6. What Driver stack will you be running?

  • a. Commentary – QLogic now has a driver stack for the QLE8100 and the QLE3100 10Gb adapters. Customers need to closely examine the features of each to determine which has the right capabilities and management tools available, for each protocol on each card before they make a choice about deploying a CNA.
  • b. Emulex Position – This is only going to create confusion for IT managers. The Emulex UCNA provides a single driver stack and a unified management story across our UCNA, CNA and FC HBA product lines.

I am sure others can add to this list, but the core questions are simple. Do you want to pick a solution with a future that is uncertain, or go with a vendor with a simple, unified and clear road map for connectivity and management? We plan to continue looking at our own products and competitive offerings from your perspective to help you make solid data-driven decisions.

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