Our goal is to make your life simpler. We put the concept of true NAS/SAN integration on the map in my opinion. I think NetApps* beat us with the function, but their implementation was poor. Of course, we had a great SAN product, but 2.5 years ago we had one customer, so nobody really took us seriously either. So I will give them credit for being the first, but Pillar I think deserves credit for having a real SAN. Being fair, NetApp has improved their SAN implementation quite a bit in the last couple years.

One criticism I have heard from a BIG independent storage vendor is that we build a utility platform that competes against NS, CX and low-end DMX products. Duh? That is the whole point! The critics say we “have to” support SAN/NAS together. I say we do support SAN/NAS together … and the competition doesn’t. But I am speaking of facts, albeit with a bias, so I will quote Brian Garrett of ESG, taken from the March cover story in Storage Magazine by Jacob Gsoedl.

"With Symmetrix, Clariion, Celerra and Centera, EMC has four different solutions, each with its own code base and architecture, and it would make sense for EMC to head to a unified solution," says Brian Garrett, technical director, ESG Lab at Enterprise Strategy Group.

Why buy several platforms to serve all your requirements when one will do? Really! Stove-piping just jacks up the TCO to the benefit of the storage vendor, not the customer.

The article in Storage Magazine goes on to say all kinds of nice stuff about Pillar – and frankly we deserve it, but if I say any more you guys will think the marketing team at Pillar wrote this instead of me. For those of you who are suspicious, check out the footnote below....you can be sure they didn’t write that one.

OK – I will put one good one in for the Marketing Team – here she goes:

The same story describes the Pillar Axiom in the following way, “Pillar has supported FC, iSCSI, NFS and CIFS in its Axiom arrays from day one. A scalable architecture, offloading of file-system protocol and RAID processing to so-called Slammers, and cluster support make the Axiom array family a great fit for SMBs and enterprises. Tight integration with Oracle tools like Oracle Enterprise Manager makes Axiom arrays a perfect fit in Oracle environments.

-Mike

* I know it is NetApp now, but for crying out loud could they be more sensitive about their name? Who cares about their stinking name? NTAP, Network Appliance, NetApp, they’re all just fine. What nobody can understand is why they changed their logo to one that looks familiar if you’ve been to Stonehenge. Perhaps they have a Druid on board over there? If they ever commission a sculpture for a stage prop with this logo – they better make sure they have their feet and inches straight or they could end up imitating a scene from Spinal Tap.