EMC to deliver network-attached intelligent storage systems; Company outlines strategy, opens new network storage technology center to showcase latest developments

Business Wire, April 9, 1996

HOPKINTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 9, 1996--EMC Corporation today outlined its strategy for delivering intelligent information storage systems that connect directly to computer networks without host computer intervention, for specific network-based applications. The products, to be introduced later this year, will feature new EMC-developed software and be based on EMC's Symmetrix Integrated Cached Disk Array (ICDA) storage systems. In support of this effort, EMC today opened a new, state-of-the-art Network Storage Technology Center at its corporate headquarters here. The center will showcase the new technology for customers and partners.

The network-attached storage systems, developed under EMC's Intelligent Storage Architecture (ISA), include the EMC Media Server, which will be exhibited next week at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention; a file server solution expected to begin shipping in the third quarter of 1996; and other network-attached intelligent storage products currently under development.

EMC's market-leading Symmetrix ICDA systems already incorporate unique microcode that increases system performance by enabling the storage system to handle some of the processing previously done by the CPU. Still, current systems are only able to respond to requests from host computers for specific chunks, or "blocks" of data. EMC developed new software to enable its storage systems to "understand" requests for actual files and to send them to any desired location on a computer network. The main benefit to end users is much faster response times, eliminating the CPU bottleneck that often plagues users who rely on host computers for intensive file services.

Carl Lehmann, Senior Research Analyst with The Meta Group, said, "More and more users today rely on local and wide-area networks for sharing large computer files (including image and video), resulting in serious network bottlenecks. They have discovered that adding bandwidth to increase the capacity of their networks does not improve response time as they hoped, simply because they immediately find new uses for the additional bandwidth and fill it to capacity. A better solution to information bottlenecks, as EMC is demonstrating with its network storage products, is to provide all network nodes with direct access to a high-performance, high-reliability, intelligent storage device."

"It is difficult for customers to fully benefit from network-driven computing, and the speed of information being transmitted over new, high-speed networks, when access to network-based information repositories is painfully slow," said James B. Rothnie, EMC's Senior Vice President of Marketing. "EMC's unique solution will distinguish itself from other general-purpose systems because it is an optimized platform with scalable storage and high data throughput resulting in faster access to information by more users."

The new software, called DART (Data Access in Real Time), acts as a front end to the ICDA system running in a cluster of Pentium microprocessor-based "data movers," with SCSI FWD interfaces and high-speed network interfaces, allowing the storage system to receive requests for file access directly from the network. This specialized software enables the intelligent storage to stream data to the network clients, rapidly and reliably. It can be used in a variety of applications, such as workgroup file sharing, network backup, Web services, electronic cinema distribution and tapeless TV broadcasting and post-production.

"The majority of current file server solutions on the market are based on commodity CPUs and storage using general purpose operating systems," said Israel Gat, General Manager of EMC's Network Storage Group. "As more demands are placed on the network and performance limitations are encountered, the traditional approach to increasing throughput has been to add more processors. This is an expensive, counter-productive approach, employing a tool which is inappropriate for addressing the issue of poor I/O performance. The most effective way of addressing this is by moving intelligence into the I/O subsystem, the approach utilized by EMC.

"EMC has always focused on the I/O problem and, as an independent storage provider, has always been free of the limitations imposed by the CPU-centric paradigm. As we did in the mainframe and open systems storage markets, EMC is entering the network storage market by offering our customers a better alternative to increasing the amount of MIPS on a server."

EMC Corporation, based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, is the world's leading independent supplier of enterprise-wide intelligent information storage and retrieval technology, designing systems for mainframe, open systems and midrange environments. The company has offices worldwide, trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol EMC and is included on the S&P 500 Index. For further information about EMC products and services, EMC's home page can be accessed at http://www.emc.com. -0-