Building on the strengths of a relationship with EMC since 2001, Dell took a significant stride forward with its US$1.4 billion acquisition of Internet SCSI (iSCSI) pioneer EqualLogic in January 2008—resulting in a combined storage portfolio spanning Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and network attached storage (NAS) technologies.
The visionaries behind this game-changing strategy are Darren Thomas, the vice president and general manager of the Dell Enterprise Storage Group overseeing the DellTM EqualLogicTM , Dell PowerVaultTM , and Dell/EMC storage families; and Paula Long, a founder and vice president of products and strategy at EqualLogic and currently the vice president of engineering for the Dell Enterprise Storage Group. In this exclusive interview, they share their thoughts on the state of enterprise storage technology today and why storage virtualization plays such a pivotal role in data center optimization-including how the EqualLogic acquisition has advanced adoption of iSCSI storage area networks (SANs); how the Dell/EMC relationship, Dell/EMC CX4 Series storage, and Fibre Channel SANs factor into Dell’s enterprise storage strategy; how business trends such as green initiatives, virtualization, simplicity, automation, and modularity are changing the way enterprises approach storage technologies; the benefits offered by innovations such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), and unified network fabrics; how deduplication can help optimize storage infrastructures; and advice on simplifying management, consolidating storage, and scaling seamlessly.
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