News

posted on 20 May 2008 15:24

EMC has said its cloud computing/web 2.0/all-singing/all-dancing/object repository software will have its launch delayed until the summer. There will be a big Hulk announcement at the same time.

Hulk, now known to be the InfiniFlex 10000, and its Maui software sibling were first mentioned by EMC CEO Joe Tucci in November last year with a seven month wait for their launch. They were EMC's entry in the massive scale-out storage node space, competing with product's such as IBM's XIV and HP's recently announced Extreme Data Storage System. The company talked of it being an object repository with Maui being far more than a clustered file system. It would, for example, combine dispersed storage nodes into a single repository.

The hype has not lived up to the hope thus far. Hulk has had a somewhat undistinguished introduction. It appeared at a recent EMC innovation event and was then seen at the NAB show in April as the InfiniFlex 10000. Isilon has said it's been meeting and beating it in competitive sales deals.

You will look for and search for InfiniFlex in vain on EMC's website. It's now being described as a clustered NAS (network-attached storage) product putting it into the Isilon product area.

The Maui software is, it is thought, simply not ready. Tucci did say it will run on other hardware platforms as well as the InfiniFlex and that other software would run on InfiniFlex. (IBRIX' clustered file system software has been mentioned in that regard.)

At the summer launch both Maui and InfiniFlex will be splashed. So we wait to be splashed and wonder if InfiniFlex is going to be an Invista-like product in terms of its sales impact.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}