Emulex Launches 'Why I/O Is Strategic' Education Series

SAN FRANCISCO and COSTA MESA, Calif., Aug. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- VMWORLD -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE: ELX) today announced that it has teamed with leading industry analysts, including Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), IDC, Evaluator Group and 451 Research, to demonstrate the strategic importance of I/O in the data center for four key trends: virtualization, cloud computing, big data and convergence. The new education series, which is an anthology of briefs by industry analysts and a series of associated webcasts, aims to help IT professionals recognize the strategic importance of I/O and make informed decisions. To better understand the critical role of I/O related to these trends, Emulex also surveyed more than 1,500 IT leaders.

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"The network has truly become a critical component in the application, whether it is the Internet, cloud, virtualization, clustering or mobile devices," said Shaun Walsh, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development, Emulex. "These applications have special requirements, and are driving substantial increases in network traffic. In fact, in a recent survey we conducted, 76 percent of respondents said that network I/O is the most critical potential bottleneck in the data center."

The full results of the Emulex survey, which polled more than 1,500 IT professionals across North America and Europe, will be published in September 2012. The survey focused on IT professionals' views of data center issues and trends, including network bandwidth and I/O, virtualization, cloud, big data and network convergence.

The education series, entitled 'Why I/O Is Strategic,' examines critical I/O considerations across four key technology areas, including virtualization, cloud computing, big data and convergence. Key findings from the analyst briefs on these trends include:

Virtualization

ESG notes that as highly virtualized environments continue to mature and become more flexible and dynamic, it will be critical to assess, design and architect appropriate I/O connectivity to ensure success. Organizations need to focus on more than servers, networking and storage – I/O also needs to be a strategic piece of an overall IT system.¹ In the Emulex survey, 85 percent of respondents said network throughput was a significant or very significant gating factor in limiting how many virtual machines they could run on a single physical server.

"Organizations continue to build agile IT infrastructures that are capable of responding to rapidly changing conditions, and virtualization is a key part of that agility," said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst, ESG. "As virtualization grows, it will be critical for IT staffs to understand I/O's importance in ensuring that the virtualized environment continues to operate and scale properly."

Cloud

IDC research shows that public IT cloud services will grow at almost four times the rate of the IT market as a whole. Worldwide revenue from public IT cloud services will reach $72.9 billion in 2015.² As this market continues to mature, cloud service providers will need to develop a very broad portfolio of services for their customers, and a highly scalable I/O foundation will be an essential part of that portfolio. In the Emulex survey, nearly 40 percent of respondents said the advent of the cloud has increased the need for network bandwidth in the data center by 25 percent or more.

"Public cloud services allow organizations to reduce costs, improve their agility, and deliver rich content such as video, digital images, music and software to mobile users," said Rick Villars, vice president, Information and Cloud, IDC. "As the number of mobile users and the overall volume of available content grows, I/O will play a critical role in making sure that public cloud services deliver the proper user experience."

Big Data

The Evaluator Group notes that a pent-up demand for the tangible business benefits resulting from big data analytics, including Hadoop, now exists within the enterprise. This demand has been building at the CEO and CIO levels, as well as with business line managers. To meet this demand, clusters will be scaled in multiple dimensions, more nodes will be added for more processing and storage, and faster processors will be adopted as they become more ubiquitous.³ More than half of all respondents in the Emulex survey said that over the next two years, big data would increase their organization's need for bandwidth in the data center by more than 50 percent.

"Network infrastructure for big data applications should be bandwidth-capable and adaptable to handle the impact of ingesting large volumes of data and delivering it to big data analytics systems," said John Webster, senior partner, Evaluator Group. "The high volume of data that needs to be transferred can be compared to trying to move an elephant through a series of pipes."

Convergence

451 Research examines how network convergence is becoming a strategic choice for IT managers as they evaluate next steps in their data center deployments to increase company competitiveness, reduce OPEX and deal with a myriad of new demands. Once independent worlds, storage and data center networking are converging to meet the flexibility and scalability demands of new data center infrastructures.⁴ In fact, 78 percent of those surveyed by Emulex said they believed it was inevitable that data and storage networks would converge into a single, consolidated network.

"Historically, data networking, storage networking and server networking took different paths for a variety of technological and political reasons," said Eric Hanselman, research director, 451 Research. "Today, these networks are converging in the data center to create best-of-breed solutions that improve performance and reduce complexity and costs."

Emulex will also host a 'Why I/O Is Strategic' webcast series that will cover each of these topics, featuring the analyst-authors, including:

• September 25^th – delivering the results of the survey
• October 10^th – with ESG on why I/O is strategic for virtualization
• November 14^th – with IDC on why I/O is strategic for the cloud
• December 12^th – with Evaluator Group on why I/O is strategic for big data
• January 16^th – with 451 Research on why I/O is strategic for convergence

In addition, Emulex has launched a series of marketing initiatives around the 'Why I/O Is Strategic' theme, including social media campaigns, email programs, a solutions-focused microsite, collateral and advertising.

1. Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG): Why I/O is Strategic—Virtualization, August 2012
2. IDC Analyst Connection, The Critical Role of I/O in Public Cloud Service Provider Environments, August 2012
3. The Evaluator Group: Big Data - Maximizing the Flow, August 2012
4. 451 Research: When Worlds Combine – Storage and Data Networking Convergence, August 2012

Visit the 'Why I/O Is Strategic' microsite here.

Download a copy of the 'Why I/O Is Strategic' education series here.

Register for the September 25 webcast here.

Tweet This: Emulex Demonstrates why I/O is strategic at @vmworld: http://bit.ly/OatqXr #vmworld12

Read our Market Mantras blog on today's news here.

Follow Emulex on Twitter

About Emulex

Emulex, the leader in converged networking solutions, provides enterprise-class connectivity for servers, networks and storage devices within the data center. The company's product portfolio of Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters, 10Gb Ethernet Network Interface Cards, Ethernet-based Converged Network Adapters, controllers, embedded bridges and switches, and connectivity management software are proven, tested and trusted by the world's largest and most demanding IT environments. Emulex solutions are used and offered by the industry's leading server and storage OEMs including, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, Huawei, IBM, NEC, NetApp and Oracle. Emulex is headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif. and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. More information about Emulex (NYSE:ELX) is available at www.Emulex.com.

Emulex Safe Harbor Statement

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above include forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. Emulex wishes to caution readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Those factors include among others, intellectual property claims, with or without merit, that could result in costly litigation, cause product shipment delays, require Emulex to indemnify customers, or require Emulex to enter into royalty or licensing agreements, which may or may not be available. Furthermore, Emulex has in the past obtained, and may be required in the future to obtain, licenses of technology owned by other parties. Emulex cannot be certain that the necessary licenses will be available or that they can be obtained on commercially reasonable terms. If Emulex were to fail to obtain such royalty or licensing agreements in a timely manner and on reasonable terms, Emulex's business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. Ongoing lawsuits, such as the action brought by Broadcom Corporation ("Broadcom"), present inherent risks, any of which could have a material adverse effect on Emulex's business, financial condition, or results of operations. Such potential risks include continuing expenses of litigation, risk of loss of patent rights and/or monetary damages, risk of injunction against the sale of products incorporating the technology in question, counterclaims, attorneys' fees, incremental costs associated with product or component redesigns, and diversion of management's attention from other business matters. With respect to the Broadcom litigation, such potential risks also include the availability of an adequate sunset period of time to make design changes, the ability to implement any design changes, the availability of customer resources to complete any re-qualification or re-testing that may be needed, the ability to maintain favorable working relationships with Emulex suppliers of serializer/deserializer (SerDes)  modules and the ability to obtain a settlement that does not put Emulex at a competitive disadvantage. In addition, the fact that the economy generally, and the technology and storage segments specifically, have been in a state of uncertainty makes it difficult to determine if past experience is a good guide to the future and makes it impossible to determine if markets will grow or shrink in the short term. The current economic downturn and the resulting disruptions in world credit and equity markets that are creating economic uncertainty for Emulex's customers and the storage networking market as a whole has, and could, continue to adversely affect Emulex's revenues and results of operations. Furthermore, the effect of any actual or potential unsolicited offers to acquire Emulex may have an adverse effect on Emulex's operations. As a result of these uncertainties, Emulex is unable to predict its future results with any accuracy. Other factors affecting these forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the following: faster than anticipated decline in the storage networking market; slower than expected growth of the storage networking market or the failure of Emulex's Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) customers to successfully incorporate Emulex products into their systems; Emulex's dependence on a limited number of customers and the effects of the loss of, decrease in or delays of orders by any such customers, or the failure of such customers to make timely payments; the emergence of new or stronger competitors as a result of consolidation movements in the market; the timing and market acceptance of Emulex products or Emulex OEM customers' new or enhanced products; costs associated with entry into new areas of the storage technology market; the variability in the level of Emulex's backlog and the variable and seasonal procurement patterns of Emulex's customers; any inadequacy of Emulex's intellectual property protection and the costs of actual or potential third-party claims of infringement and any related indemnity obligations or adverse judgments; impairment charges, including but not limited to goodwill and intangible assets; changes in tax rates or legislation; the effects of acquisitions; the effects of terrorist activities; natural disasters, such as the earthquake and resulting tsunami off the coast of Japan in March 2011 and the significant flooding in various parts of Thailand in October 2011, and any resulting disruption in Emulex's supply chain or customer purchasing patterns or any other resulting economic or political instability; the highly competitive nature of the markets for Emulex products as well as pricing pressures that may result from such competitive conditions; the effects of changes in Emulex's business model to separately charge for software; the effect of rapid migration of customers towards newer, lower cost product platforms; possible transitions from board or box level to application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) solutions for selected applications; a shift in unit product mix from higher-end to lower-end or mezzanine card products; a faster than anticipated decrease in the average unit selling prices or an increase in the manufactured cost of Emulex products; delays in product development; Emulex's reliance on third-party suppliers and subcontractors for components and assembly; Emulex's ability to attract and retain key technical personnel; Emulex's ability to benefit from research and development activities; Emulex's dependence on international sales and internationally produced products; changes in accounting standards; and the potential effects of global warming and any resulting regulatory changes on Emulex's business. These and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are also discussed in Emulex's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its recent filings on Forms 8-K, 10-K and 10-Q. Statements in this release are based on current expectations and, except as required by law, Emulex undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements for any reason. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

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SOURCE Emulex Corporation