EMC Corporation announced major updates to its data protection portfolio that extend its leadership in traditional purpose-built backup appliances and deliver powerful new software solutions that disrupt the data protection status quo during EMC World 2015 held in Las Vegas last May 4-7. The announcement follows after a recent global data protection study revealed that data loss and downtime cost enterprises $1.7 trillion globally in 2014. As businesses accelerate their use and development of next-gen, cloud-enabled applications, they have struggled to protect data across what has become the hyper-extended enterprise. Jason Buffington, Sr. Analyst for Data Protection, ESG, said: “EMC has been talking ‘software-defined' for some time and these latest announcements show how the company is delivering against their ‘protect everywhere' vision in its data protection and availability portfolio. EMC is increasingly focused on improvements in its software, which, in turn, will enable customers to intelligently control data protection in environments that are becoming ever more complex. With the introduction of these new features, EMC is empowering customers and partners to create simple, capable and trusted infrastructures that truly protect data regardless of where it lives or is used.” EMC announced the release of Project CoprHD (“copperhead”), an open source version of EMC ViPR Controller embracing open development and a free “no restrictions” download for non-production use of its ScaleIO software. EMC also previewed future enhancements for ScaleIO. Since its launch in 2013, customers, partners and industry analysts have hailed ViPR Controller as a leading, vendor-neutral control point for Software-Defined Storage automation. ViPR Controller is storage automation software that centralizes and transforms EMC and third-party storage into a simple, extensible and open platform and EMC will continue to sell the commercial version of Project CoprHD, the EMC ViPR Controller, as a fully supported offering. ViPR Controller is offered as a key enabler for Third Platform applications that require fully integrated, next-generation scale-out storage architectures. Project CoprHD makes the code for ViPR Controller – all the storage automation and control functionality – open for community-driven development. Planned for availability on GitHub next month, Project CoprHD is expected to be licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL 2.0) and enables customers, partners, developers and other storage vendors to access, expand and contribute to Project CoprHD's breadth and depth of features and functionality. Positioned in the data center as a single, open control plane for multivendor storage, Project CoprHD offers the same level of flexibility, choice, security and transparency as ViPR Controller, while adding the ability to create new services and applications. Jeremy Burton, President Products and Marketing, EMC Corporation said: “For anyone left confused, today's announcements prove this is not your father's EMC. By offering access to Project CoprHD, the open source version of EMC ViPR Controller and free downloads of EMC ScaleIO – two key enabling pieces of our Software-Defined Storage portfolio – EMC has turned a corner by delving more deeply into open, collaborative software development with our customers, partners, developers and competitors. This represents a massive shift in our strategy that we believe will help accelerate our customers' efforts to develop new application-centric business models.” EMC also announced the ScaleIO Product Community on the EMC Community Network (ECN). The ScaleIO Product Community is designed to be an interactive information exchange platform for technical support, questions for ScaleIO experts, product documentation, downloads, user guides, FAQs and training. Through this community, EMC will allow customers, partners and developers to download EMC ScaleIO software for free for non-production use, without restrictions on time or capacity. Users will experience firsthand EMC's philosophy of “free and frictionless” downloads with just a few clicks – no registration required. This will enable customers to create full-fledged ScaleIO environments for free non-production use before upgrading to a paid production license. EMC announced new updates to the EMC VMAX3 platform, the industry's leading data service platform, fundamentally changing what has been possible with enterprise storage by delivering new levels of automation, modernization and consolidation to customers. EMC is extending enterprise data services to multiple platforms with the launch of FAST.X, automating storage tiering across the data center. EMC also announced an expanded set of VMAX3 data services and capabilities that further automate, consolidate and protect mission-critical IT operations. VMAX3 Introduces FAST.X – Next Wave of Storage Tiering, ViPR Controller and VMAX3 Integration, Automated Storage Tiering to XtremIO, Automated Storage Tiering to the Cloud, VMAX3 Active-Active Replication. Later this year, VMAX3 will deliver active-active high availability for non-stop data access and resource balancing with newly enhanced SRDF/Metro functionality. Mohammed Amin senior vice president Turkey, Eastern Europe, Africa and Middle East, said: “ In visualization and clouding EMC Federation global market share is 86%, with aim to raise EMC market value from 50% to 55% in the coming 12 months. – By Samar Yahya/SG
