 We'll be talking to him, but right now we have John Webster, an analyst extraordinaire, and welcome to the Cube. Thank you, David. So, first of all, tell us a little bit about the Evaluator Group. We have two sets of clients, end user clients and vendor clients. We do basically storage comparative analysis. We look at various storage devices, storage arrays, storage infrastructure, storage software. We line them up, compare them, report those results, typically to end users who engage us when they want to make a major acquisition and need some due diligence from an independent source to size up the acquisition. So what are you going to tell your end user clients about this announcement? What's your angle? What's my angle? You know, it's interesting. I'm trying to figure out which came first, storage virtualization or server virtualization. You could make the case that the mainframe did server virtualization first, but, you know, really after that came storage virtualization, and then we saw this huge uptick of VMware and the virtualized servers. And it's kind of funny that what's sort of propelling the interest in storage virtualization, witness the three-part acquisition, is actually server virtualization. And now you have tremendous interest in storage virtualization. The angle here really is Hitachi's been in this space for years. I mean, they've been doing this for a long time. And I think they get this. I think they know how to do this. Aren't you surprised? I know I was, but I wonder if it's just maybe because I'm out of touch, but that with server virtualization that more backend storage isn't virtualized, and for instance VMware operations, did that surprise you or does that surprise you? No, because I think, you know, it's hard to get away, even if you do server virtualization. It's still, I think, difficult to get away conceptually from the, you know, server storage sort of stack, right? And typically that's been managed in a way that sort of promotes that. In other words, you have management groups that concentrate on servers and storage and networks as separate functions, right? So when you start, let's say, looking at management of a virtualized server environment in a more holistic way, then you get some of this blending and let's say cross-pollinization and, you know, people like server vendors buying or server administrative groups being much more involved in storage decisions and looking at consolidating storage from a server perspective. Do you see those silos coming together or getting broken down in your end-user customer base, or are we still a ways away from that? It's starting to happen now. It is. I mean, we see evidence of it now. We have storage groups that are becoming much more conversant in networking, which is interesting because that, you know, the storage group, are they going to work with the networking guys? It's probably not going to be the reverse. They work together very well. But anyway, it's getting better. Is there, you know, one of the things that Hitachi has always done really well, as you know, is the virtualized third-party storage arrays. Is there a financial angle or an asset management angle there, or is that more of just a clever… Well, I think there absolutely is, but you have to think of acquisition alternatives to get there. In other words, if you're just thinking about capital acquisition, it doesn't really do much for you. But if you think about leasing and not taking ownership in infrastructure, then things can be very creative. It's possible, for example, to bring in a platform like VSP on a lease, and you could actually buy out the underlying third-party storage and include that in the lease also. And now you have sort of a cloud storage platform, if you will, that you pay for monthly. Right. So the shift of that whole cap X to up X mindset? Absolutely. And you can drag along storage that you've already bought. The leasing company can just come in and buy that off your books and include that in the lease. And now you've got capital that you could throw at lease payments or other projects. Let's talk a little bit about VSP in the marketplace. You're seeing a completely different philosophy than, say, the major competitor at EMC with VMAX, scale out and really focused on those high-end mission-critical applications. We heard a lot today about scale out, scale deep, and scale up. And then this cloud, your sort of content cloud. That's sort of new positioning for Hitachi. What do you make of that whole differentiation between, let's say, the classic EMC symmetrics and what Hitachi is now talking about? How much of that is real? How much of that is vision, in your opinion? So I'm still, honestly, Dave, I'm still trying to figure that out. There is something to be said for, in a way, Hitachi reintroducing the virtualization platform, in a way, because EMC customers have not really heard EMC talk much about virtualization. Now they are. With V-Plex. Exactly. And so it makes that discussion, I think, very real for EMC customers. Hitachi is here with a platform that's an alternative. So it's an interesting play for Hitachi to sort of, in a way, reintroduce the virtualization platform that they have and add to it some attributes that they think are unique in the marketplace. How much of that they can actually deliver right now after listening to Jack DeMay's speech? That's an open question for me. I'll give you my opinion and I'd like you to comment. I think that the V-Plex announcement was really sort of confirmation of a lot of the things that Hitachi has popularized, maybe IBM's SVC as well. And EMC's, obviously, EMC has never done a Me Too, right? Or maybe they have, but they very rarely do a Me Too. They're trying to mark in a much broader vision. But I see that as confirmation that storage virtualization is a major trend. Oh, no question. No question. I mean, to EMC customers, virtualization isn't real until EMC says it's real. So now it's real for them. It hasn't seemed to hurt EMC over the years, though, has it? It's quite amazing. Okay, so talk a little bit about, you know, I want to switch gears a little bit. We were at Oracle OpenWorld last week. Okay. And you heard, were you there? I wasn't, unfortunately. Did you hear some of those? I'm regretting not having been there. Well, you know, I kind of have mixed emotions about it. I mean, it was a very weird vibe. You were at VMworld? Yes. Yeah, so VMworld was really open. It was kind of like Woodstock. A lot of love going on at Oracle OpenWorld. It was very closed and controlling. And I get the feeling that Oracle just really wants to own the world, even though it probably recognizes that it can't. Much different vibe than what you're hearing from Hitachi, isn't it? Oh, yes, I would say. Although, you know, it's interesting that you should say that because I've been doing a lot of work on things like the Green Plum acquisition from EMC and looking at where they're going with Green Plum versus even an announcement like this. And, you know, part of this is on one side, you have, let's say, a camp that says you sort of have to own the data in order to manage it and control it and do all the things that Hitachi is saying you have to do with it. And in the Green Plum world, you don't necessarily have to own the data. You can build pipes to the data without actually owning it. And that's an interesting model. Yeah, it is an interesting model and one that is quite viable for Hitachi to compete on. Let's talk a little bit about big data. I mean, we're hearing the content cloud and the unstructured data and the unification. I'm very impressed with that message. I'm not hearing a lot on big data. Do you think that's a missing piece here? Could be. Could be. Right now, big data is sort of pigeonholed into business analytics. And business analytics looks like an outgrowth of data warehousing, which is sort of a niche application, I think, or at least regarded in a way in the storage industry as a niche application. I actually think it's a much bigger opportunity. Yeah, but, you know, in classic Hitachi fashion, they're going to focus on their strengths. Absolutely. And you're starting to now see the archive of stuff seep through. So I actually think there's a lot of potential with Hitachi. I do, too. I think so. You know, the thing, though, is that Hitachi can't take a heavy iron approach to this, because the competition is not heavy iron. So do you think Hitachi can compete with the so-called 1.5 players? I mean, that's clearly what VMAX was all about, was this hybrid thing competing with the likes of 3PAR and others. Does Hitachi have the cost structure in this new platform to do that? It potentially could. It depends on really how they structure it for end users. Again, if you structure this as usage as opposed to ownership, then it gets much closer to the cloud model, you know, in terms of how you acquire it as an end user. And so if you can avoid a lot of the upfront cost by simply paying for what you have over time as you use it, I think you get around a lot of those issues that are created by capital acquisition. We're here with John Webster of the Evaluator Group, longtime analyst in the storage and infrastructure business. My last question is really around advice for users. What advice would you give to your end user clients around this whole, you know, for those trying to figure out, you know, what do I do with my storage platform and what about all this cloud stuff and what advice would you give them? Well, I think a lot of users I think are at the point where they're trying to figure out what's the best storage match for a virtualized server environment. Right? And so the advice I would give is to size up the competition based on, you know, that kind of environment. You know, look at who's integrated best with VMware or Citrix or Hyper-V, depending on, you know, what your flavor is. And, you know, who's got the relationships, who can best sort of deliver to you as a user in this holistic management environment that we're seeing users progress to. You know, who can be the best for the entire group that's managing not only servers but networks and storage as well. And the evaluator group obviously can help you do that. You guys are one of the best, if not the best out there taking all this bog of information and putting it into really easy to utilize tools so that users can make those suggestions. Thank you, David. We definitely believe that. You worked hard on it and you got many years of history doing it. We started doing this in 1997. So, yes. Well, John Webster, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. It was great to have you. Thank you, David.