How IBM and HDS copied virtualisation technology

IBM and HDS copied block storage virtualisation technology from Datacore; so says a person very familiar with the events at the time.

The story goes like this: A few years ago companies like DataCore were pioneering block storage virtualisation. The enterprise storage vendors like EMC, HDS and IBM were not committed to it.

IBM realised block storage virtualisation could commoditise the block storage array business. That was the risk. So it signed a deal with DataCore in 2001 and bought time while it learnt about storage virtualisation. The DataCore IBM relationship was strong. Then it perceptibly cooled in public. IBM dismissed storage virtualisation only, a little while later, for it to bring out its SAN Volume Controller product which virtualises block storage.

The theory is that IBM found out all it could about SANsymphony's capabilities and then reverse-engineered it.

The same view is presented about HDS. DataCore had an arrangement with HDS in 2000, whereby they were all over each other's development labs. Then, some time later, and hey presto, HDS comes out with its TagmaStore virtualised block array. The source said: "The deal with DataCore was a placeholder. If virtualisation did take off then they could ride on DataCore's back. They bought time. DataCore used the relationship too. It got credibility. It told the world about the HDS partnership. It got customers it wouldn't otherwise have. Ditto partners."

He asserted that DataCore used its IBM relationship in the same way.

But DataCore did not have an arrangement with EMC. InVista has not benefited from exposure to SANsymphony capabilities as, the story goes, IBM's SVC and HDS' USP have. Anyway, EMC and DataCore did talk once, in pre-Joe Tucci days. But the then EMC CEO, Mike Ruettgers, "had an ego as big as he was" and the EMC/DataCore people did not hit it off.

There was another factor. If DataCore and EMC actually had had a partnership none of the other big storage vendors, notably HDS and IBM, would have talked to DataCore at all.

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7 Comments | Add new commentReader Comments

what is the point of this article?

Posted by jack

what is the point of this article?

Posted by jack

Interesting background from IBM's Tony Pearson on his blog says: The partnership proved worthwhile, not just to prove to IBM that this was a worthwhile market to enter, but also how "NOT" to package a solution. Specifically, DataCore SANsymphony was software that you had to install on your own Windows-based server. The client was left with the task of ordering a suitable Intel-based server, with the right amount of CPU cycles, RAM and host bus adapter ports, and configure the Windows operating system and DataCore software.

It didn't go well. Basically, customers were expected to be their own "hardware engineers", having to know way too much about storage hardware and software to design a combination that worked for their workloads. Most clients were disappointed with the amount of effort involved, and the resulting poor performance.

I can't put the URL here - sorry.

Posted by Chris

The point Jack? I found it interesting as a piece of inside-the-industry gossip and how a 'small guy' can perceive its technology being copied by a 'big guy' in a partnership. Also product technology antecedents interest me.

Posted by Chris

Another view, from Kirby Wadsworth's blog: What a twisted tail-eating snake! – the original Encore virtualization ideas (from Ziya, et al) were sold to Sun and lost or buried there, independently reborn again as software (from Ziya, et al) at Datacore, used by HDS as a model (not reverse engineered or stolen, but more likely modeled and learned from) to create products which HDS now OEMs back to SUN…

Posted by Chris

I was very close to these evaluations and there is a a great deal of truth in the above article.

IBM evaluated the DataCore product in thier UK, Hursley labs in 2000. At the same time the same goup were developing a Linux based storage virtualization product called "Loadstone", an unfunded skunk works project...later to become IBM's SVC...

In 2002, Hitachi Japan (Systems Development Lab, Odawara Factory) also evaluated the DataCore product. Many of the advanced concepts that DataCore pioneered later turned up within Tagmastor/USP...

Kirby Wadsworth is right when he says that DataCore "model"/approach was adopted by both IBM and Hitachi, but not the DataCore code itself.

The key difference was indeed packaging. DataCore sold a software only product and for fairly obvious reasons IBM & Hitachi decided to go to market with a complete solution.

Posted by PhilM

PhilM's comments are almost true. IBM were indeed developing SVC long before any partnership with DataCore, and infact anyone who understands the internals of either product can see that there was no disection of DataCore needed, SVC was well under development based on a research project from IBM Almaden research labs using their 'compass' clustering environment developed several years before. Hence the early project name 'Lodestone' (Google it!)

Posted by orbist

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