I usually think of a “suite” in the context of a suite of rooms: an arrangement of rooms, accessible from a common entrance. “Suite” can also
be a useful analogy when an IT vendor offers a group of related products which are accessible from a common screen or console. Sometimes, however, vendors will use the term “suite” to imply that a bundle of products are integrated when in fact they are not.
EMC Continues the Tradition
EMC recently announced something called the “EMC Data Protection Suite” – a bundle of six different data protection products resulting from five different EMC acquisitions: Data Domain, Legato, Avamar, Kazeon and WysDM. Five different code bases, five different consoles and (it wouldn’t surprise me at all) five different support teams. This is a “suite”?
In doing so they have made these products easier to order, which is good for EMC, but not any easier to use, which is NOT good for customers. EMC’s Data Protection “Suite” is analogous to a suite of six rooms with five separate entrances.
They Have Their Reasons
The reason EMC is doing this is simple: they are getting their butts kicked in certain segments of the market by emerging companies like Unitrends, who are offering best-of-breed, seamlessly integrated solutions that don’t have the nickel-and-dime acquisition and licensing problems EMC is trying to solve with their so-called “suite”.
NOTE: If you are an enterprise IT shop with a staff of full-time backup babysitters, please buy this “suite” from EMC. Your babysitters’ job security will most likely be mightily enhanced by learning to use all that stuff.
To the rest of the IT world with better things to do than babysit backups: If you are interested in powerful, truly integrated, set-it-and-forget-it data protection, contact me. I can help.
[...] support teams within the parent vendor. It also means steep learning curves for users. (See my prior blog post about a particularly egregious example of [...]