EMC Announces Availability of ViPR Software-Defined Storage Platform

MILAN, Sept. 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

News Summary:

• Today EMC^® executives, customers and partners kicked off an around-the-world, 24-hour live broadcast from Milan Italy announcing new technologies that help give IT infrastructure teams the speed they need to lead their IT transformation (see related news release).
• EMC is scheduled to deliver the ViPR^® Software-Defined Storage Platform later this month—well ahead of industry expectations.
• ViPR delivers the ability to both manage storage infrastructure (the "Control Plane" through the ViPR Controller) and the data residing within that infrastructure (the "Data Plane" through ViPR Data Services).
• ViPR's first data service—Object Data Services—will be supported at general availability. ViPR Object Data Services support Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift and Atmos API's, in addition to enabling enterprises and service providers to store, access and manipulate objects.

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• View additional related news from EMC via EMC Pulse Blog
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Full Story:

Today, joined by EMC partners and customers, EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) kicked off a 24-hour, around-the-world live launch announcing new technologies that help give IT infrastructure teams the speed they need to lead their IT Transformation. At this event EMC announced that the EMC ViPR Software-Defined Storage Platform, a critical enabler to speeding this transformation, will be available later this month.

Using ViPR, customers can manage both their existing storage infrastructure (using the ViPR Controller) and the data residing within it (using ViPR Data Services), enabling them to help drive improvements in automation and lay down a modern storage architecture for future application deployments. ViPR-supported storage includes the new EMC VNX unified storage platform as well existing EMC VNX, EMC VMAX^®, EMC VPLEX^®, EMC Isilon^®, EMC RecoverPoint^® and third-party arrays including NetApp storage. ViPR provides the foundation for building Web-scale data centers without the need to hire thousands of technical experts to create a custom environment.

Read more about this news at EMC's product and technology blog, EMC Pulse Blog: http://pulseblog.emc.com/2013/09/04/emc-delivers-on-vipr-promise-and-outlines-strategic-vision-with-preview-of-project-nile

Upon general availability, ViPR will deliver Object Data Services—a capability that sets ViPR apart from other solutions on the market. ViPR Object Data Services offer support for multiple standard APIs including Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift and Atmos in addition to giving customers the ability to view objects as files, providing near-file access performance without the latency inherent in current object storage models. ViPR Object Data Services are engineered to be deployed on any ViPR-supported file storage including the new EMC VNX unified storage platform as well existing EMC VNX, EMC Isilon^® and third-party arrays including NetApp storage.

Future updates will be designed to add support for additional third-party arrays as well as commodity hardware. EMC also plans to provide a broader set of data services as part of the ViPR platform, including an HDFS Data Service which will enable customers to perform in-place Hadoop analytics across their entire heterogeneous storage environment.

This strategy of broad platform support and open extensibility means that customers can benefit from simplified management of their entire storage infrastructure with the freedom to choose the underlying platforms that are most appropriate for their particular workloads.

In addition, beginning in the fourth quarter of 2013, EMC Global Services plans to offer a new Software Defined Storage (SDS) Workshop that is the ideal starting point for EMC customers to implement VIPR for their IT environment. The half-day on-site workshop helps customers to identify their specific storage management, control, and automation needs to best maximize the ViPR platform. The workshop evaluates a customer's application and storage environment and designs the optimum storage service catalog and service classification.  A detailed roadmap provides a gap analysis between current state and future state using ViPR.

Analyst Quote

Laura DuBois, Program Vice President, Storage at IDC

"ViPR simplifies a very complex problem—the management of heterogeneous storage environments while extending the functionality of existing storage arrays is truly powerful. There's a macro trend in IT right now toward self-service, and ViPR is a first important step in making this real—and easy."

Customer Quotes

Ron Redmer, COO and CTO at assure360, a business unit of The Dolan Company

"Supporting mixed workload environments comprised of traditional and next-generation applications is central to our overall IT strategy.  However, traditional approaches to managing applications can be time consuming and cumbersome. ViPR breaks down traditional application silos and lets us be much more effective in how we deliver storage and support new application requirements.  The ViPR Object Data Service is especially valuable as it enables us to use our existing file infrastructure to support object on file capabilities. This means that traditional file and next-generation object applications can access and manipulate the same data as objects or files. This is something we could not do before without moving or copying the data."

James Mystakidis, Group Executive at Macquarie Telecom

"Data growth is at the point where it is outpacing IT's ability to keep up. This is forcing us, as well as our customers, to look for new, transformative ways to manage data. ViPR is like nothing we have seen on the market – it's a game changer. The ViPR software platform gives us the ability to efficiently manage data growth and automate necessary processes – allowing us to drive down costs and do more with less.  Its software capabilities enable us to simplify our existing storage infrastructure so that we can manage growing customer requirements and workloads in ways we never could before. ViPR is helping us deliver on the vision and promise of the Software-Defined Data Center."

EMC Executive Quote

Amitabh Srivastava, President, Advanced Software Division at EMC

"Today is a significant milestone in EMC's vision to deliver customers—both large enterprises and service providers—the foundation on which to build a Web-scale data center capable of growing to tens and hundreds of petabytes of information. By delivering ViPR ahead of industry expectations, we will provide our customers with a lightweight, software-only approach to storage management and a foundation for next generation applications. This approach not only solves the problems they face today, but provides a path to the future."

Additional Resources

• Information about ViPR
• All news today includes related information and content via EMC Pulse Blog
• Video: New DataCrunchers Speed2Lead Unified Storage Road Race
• Connect with EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn

About EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing.  Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

EMC, EMC Recover Point, Isilon, ViPR, VMAX, VNX and VPLEX are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.  All other trademarks used are the property of their respective owners.

Forward-Looking Statement Legend

This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined under the Federal Securities Laws. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iii) the relative and varying rates of product price and component cost declines and the volume and mixture of product and services revenues; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures and new product introductions; (v) component and product quality and availability; (vi) fluctuations in VMware, Inc.'s operating results and risks associated with trading of VMware stock; (vii) the transition to new products, the uncertainty of customer acceptance of new product offerings and rapid technological and market change; (viii) risks associated with managing the growth of our business, including risks associated with acquisitions and investments and the challenges and costs of integration, restructuring and achieving anticipated synergies; (ix) the ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (x) insufficient, excess or obsolete inventory; (xi) fluctuating currency exchange rates; (xii) threats and other disruptions to our secure data centers or networks; (xiii) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (xiv) war or acts of terrorism; and (xv) other one-time events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in EMC's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. EMC disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

SOURCE EMC Corporation