AllThingsD » NetApp

Intel's Romley Chip Is Good News for Storage Players EMC and NetApp

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:38:45 +0000

Remember how, last week, after a survey of 100 CIOs, the investment bank J.P. Morgan concluded that while IT spending is trending up, Intel’s new Xeon server chip known best by its code name Romley isn’t likely to be much of a catalyst for that spending? Remember also how on the very day that I wrote about that survey, I dined with Diane Bryant, head of Intel’s data center business unit, and asked for her reaction to that finding?

Well, today we heard from another bank, and its opinions about Intel’s Romley chip and what it means for data center spending couldn’t be more different. Chris Whitmore, an analyst with Deutsche Bank Market Research, published a note to clients today, arguing that Romley will indeed spur a new round of spending in corporate data centers, and that it will have an equally strong secondary effect on the fortunes of enterprise storage companies, specifically EMC and NetApp.

One of the things that Romley will encourage, Whitmore writes, is a growth in the density of virtual machines running in each server. (Remember that, more often than not, a physical server is virtualized or subdivided into many virtual servers, allowing each machine to act like several machines.) More virtual machines allows you to consolidate your physical machines and add more in the same footprint if you want, which in turn means more computing work getting done overall. Whitmore estimates that, in general, data centers will boost their workloads by 20 to 25 percent by the end of next year.

Roughly 26 percent of Romley chip purchases will be used in these virtualized environments, Whitmore estimates. And that tends to spur demand for storage to support the virtual machines. In fact, the growth of terabytes worth of storage products shipped mirrors closely the unit growth of servers. (See the graphic, below, which I screen-grabbed from the report; click to see it bigger.) In short, it’s good news for NetApp and EMC. Whitmore says both are taking share from other vendors, including IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, with sales growing at north of 20 percent a year — a growth rate that’s higher than that of the overall market, which grew 14 percent last year. He rates shares of both EMC and NetApp a “buy,” with price targets of $35 and $60, respectively.

Great news for EMC and NetApp, but what does it mean for Intel? Whitmore says to expect a mixed bag. Companies wanting to boost their use of virtual machines will be buyers. Companies that aren’t into virtualization so much, maybe not. “We believe our estimate of x86 servers shipped into virtual environments growing from 21 percent in 2011 to 26 percent in 2013 could prove conservative,” Whitmore writes. “As a result, although we expect Romley to have a relatively muted impact on overall server unit demand, we do expect it to drive another leg of virtual machine growth.”

Hadoop Start-Up Cloudera Teams Up With Storage Player NetApp

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:59:32 +0000

If a company has a batch of data of any reasonable size and wants to do anything useful with it, chances are that at one point or another it’s going to wind up using some version of Hadoop.

Hadoop, whose mascot is a cute cartoon elephant, is open source software based in part on a technique called MapReduce. Initially developed at Google, it makes big jobs involving the processing of large sets of data manageable. And while anyone can go get the open source software for free and put it to use, the number of start-up companies trying to build a business around helping other companies use Hadoop effectively is multiplying. A team of Hadoop engineers recently spun out of Yahoo as a start-up called Hortonworks, and another Hadoop outfit called MapR landed $20 million in venture capital funding in August.

To me, the best-known among the Hadoop start-ups is Cloudera. Backed by $36 million in investments from Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and In-Q-Tel, Cloudera has probably got the biggest head start among the Hadoop companies. Its customers include eBay, Groupon and AOL.

Cloudera is also the company behind the Hadoop World conference that begins tomorrow in New York; as such, the eyes of the Hadoop — er, universe — will be paying attention to what goes on here.

The first bit of news is that Cloudera will be teaming up with the storage concern NetApp, which is announcing a turnkey product called the NetApp Open Solution for Hadoop. (One of these days people will dispense with using the word “solution” in this way. Alas, not yet!) Basically, the idea is to make Hadoop and Cloudera’s subscription support service easy to deploy from within NetApp storage hardware. NetApp will become a Cloudera reseller.

One problem companies deploying Hadoop often run into is the need for more storage, says Jeff O’Neal, senior director for data center solutions at NetApp. “When you deploy Hadoop in the traditional way, the ratio between computing power and storage is locked, and here we’re opening that up.”

Why pick Cloudera, when NetApp could have just as easily slapped on a freebie Hadoop installation and sold it alongside its own hardware? Speed. Cloudera, O’Neal says, can help customers get their Hadoop installations up and running faster than they otherwise would. “We can take weeks or even months out of the cycle of getting the infrastructure up and running,” O’Neal says.

The deal will also get Cloudera exposed to some new high-rolling customers where NetApp has some strengths, says Kirk Dunn, Cloudera’s COO. NetApp, for one thing, does a lot of business with federal government customers in the areas of defense and intelligence, and their data needs aren’t getting smaller. “The workloads are big. The velocity of data coming at both the compute and storage racks are significant,” Dunn says. So is the size of the data. Consider, for example how the military and intelligence community are creating more satellite imagery than ever before; then consider that all that data has to be sorted and analyzed in an efficient way. Outside of government, banking and financial institutions want to sift through the increasing stream of information on people and companies to determine risk.

The amount of data that companies are generating is huge. Five or six years ago, the average large corporation had maybe 360 terabytes of data lying around, Dunn says. Cloudera has some customers that are generating about that much new data nearly every day, he says, and it’s not slowing down. “The problems only get more vexing as time goes on. They sure aren’t getting any simpler,” he says. After years of helping those companies and governments store all that data, NetApp is uniquely positioned, Dunn says, to go back to those organizations and sell them on the idea of mining that data for useful information. “For NetApp, this is as basic as motherhood and apple pie.”

Exclusive: Hadoop Companies Multiply as MapR Lands $20M in Funding

Arik Hesseldahl — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:15:02 +0000

Hadoop, it seems, is everywhere these days. If you have a big data job to do, Hadoop is more than likely capable of helping you get it done.

Hadoop is an open source technology known for its cute cartoon elephant mascot (hence the photo). It has its roots at Google and was inspired by MapReduce — one of the fundamental technologies that makes the Google search experience what it is — and was created at Yahoo, which donated it to the open source community by way of the Apache Software Foundation. That means it’s free.

It’s used by companies as varied as Facebook, Groupon and AOL to turn workloads involving huge sets of data into manageable tasks. It’s so popular, in fact, that several companies have sprung up hoping to turn a profit by helping other companies run Hadoop, in much the same way that Red Hat makes money by helping companies run Linux.

I’ve written here in the past about Cloudera, and Yahoo’s Hadoop team recently spun out as Hortonworks (again with the elephant references).

Now there’s another Hadoop company on the scene — MapR — and it has just secured a $20 million round of venture capital funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with Lightspeed Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates also participating. This comes on top of a strategic relationship with storage giant EMC, in which the hardware maker is offering MapR’s Hadoop distribution with some of its systems.

So what does MapR aim to do? Create an industrial-strength version of Hadoop that’s ready for the enterprise. I talked with CEO John Schroeder. “We created a reliable and dependable platform that’s built for high availability so clusters don’t fail. And we also added data protection, so you can back up your data and recover to a point in time that works in large clusters,” he said.

MapR also tuned its version of Hadoop for speed. It’s not uncommon, he said, for MapR to run two to five times faster than other distributions on standard benchmark tests. As you might expect, faster is better. You can arrive at your analytical answers sooner, or run more workloads on larger data sets, or you can run the same ones on cheaper hardware. So Schroeder is only half kidding when he says it’s “cheaper than free.”

I talked with Satish Dharmaraj, a general partner at Redpoint, and asked him what he sees in MapR. The market for “big data,” he says, is real. “It’s pretty clear to us that the MapReduce method of crunching big sets of data is the easiest and most cost-efficient way of doing things, and it’s disrupting the analytics and software industry in how they process big sets of data.”

Dharmaraj also likes the team. Schroeder was previously CEO of Calista Technologies, which he sold to Microsoft, and before that, CEO of Rainfinity, now part of EMC. His co-founder and CTO is M.C. Srivas, who ran one of Google’s search infrastructure teams, and so has an intimate familiarity with the original MapReduce to which Hadoop is so closely related. Srivas was also chief architect at Spinnaker Networks, now part of NetApp; before that, he ran the engineering team at Transarc, now part of IBM.

Finally, Dharmaraj likes MapR’s approach. “Hadoop is great, but it’s an open source project, so there’s nobody really building all the things around it that an enterprise would need, like disaster recovery. It’s also really fast. Jobs that take 30 hours on other versions are taking five hours,” he said. “That, to us, makes this the first version of Hadoop for the enterprise.”

Lucasfilm's Data Center, and an Encounter With the Real Death Star (Video)

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:00:44 +0000

Wednesday I introduced you to Kevin Clark, master of all things data at Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic. Today, as promised, I’m taking you into the data center Clark commands.

Shortly after my chat with Clark, ILM’s publicist Greg Grusby ushered me into the room, where, as you’ll hear, the roar of air conditioning units cooling all the machines makes it hard to hear much else.

The room is 10,500 square feet and contains the systems running all the things that you’d find in pretty much any other corporate data center for things like email and Web service. StarWars.com is hosted in the room, for example. But I was more interested in the machines used to produce the crazy cool visual effects. As Clark mentioned in our chat, ILM is using almost a full petabyte of storage–or nearly 1 million gigabytes–and for that it relies upon NetApp appliances.

I lingered over an older rack of machines nicknamed the Death Star. These are the old customized Racksaver servers, each containing a single AMD Athlon processor and 2 gigabytes of memory, that were used to render imagery for “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith.” They’re also now considered so old that it’s not cost-effective to run them any longer.

Then we saw the new machines: The IBM racks, which to me actually look like they belong on the Death Star, are a mix of LS22 servers with AMD processors and newer HS22‘s with Intel processors. They average 32GB of memory per blade and currently cranking away on several movies. If you’re among those eagerly awaiting the release of films like “Cowboys and Aliens,” “Pirates of the Caribbean 4,” “Super 8,” “Transformers 3,” “Battleship” and “The Avengers,” every blink of the lights on the Bladecenter brings them one step closer to completion.

We’re not done with the tours. Next up, I’ll take you on a walking tour of the Town of Dirt seen in the animated feature “Rango.” And before we’re done with all this, I’ll tell you what ILM considers its “secret weapon,” at least from a computing perspective. Enjoy the video.

[ See post to watch video ]

(Image via Wookiepedia)

NetApp Acquires Engenio Storage Business From LSI

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:43:57 +0000

NetApp, the storage networking equipment concern, said today it had reached a deal to purchase the Engenio storage business from chipmaker LSI for $480 million in cash. The move will bolster its place in the market for video and high-performance computing applications. LSI’s Engenio unit makes rack-mountable storage devices, and generated $750 million in sales in 2010. LSI said it would use the proceeds to fund a $750 million share buyback. LSI shares soared by nearly four percent in after-hours trading. NetApp shares finished the regular session down 11 cents, and appeared to be held for after-hours trading pending the end of a conference call discussing the deal.

IT Trends in 2011 and Beyond: More Cloud, Flash and Virtualization

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 18:38:13 +0000

Gleacher analyst Brian Marshall is out with a short research note this morning summarizing a few trends he thinks will be important in IT in 2011. Companies he covers, which include VMware, NetApp, EMC, IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Apple collectively saw their shares grow by 40 percent this year, beating the S&P 500, which grew 13 percent. With enterprise IT companies roughly six quarters into a recovery period following the disaster that was 2009, he says 2010 is going to prove to be a difficult year to follow.

For 2011, he expects a continuation of a lot of trends you’ve already been hearing about. You probably already knew about the direction of the general trends, but Marshall has included some interesting figures around the size of various opportunities.

Cloud computing, he says, currently consumes only two percent of the global enterprise storage budget today, and he expects that to grow to between 15 and 20 percent within five years.

He says solid-state storage–which uses flash memory to enhance storage in servers by breaking up the bottlenecks that exist between processors that do the number crunching and hard drives that store the data–is “at a nascent stage,” and that solid-state use in enterprise applications will only get more important in 2011.

Finally, expect more virtualization in the data center. Currently, corporations virtualize about 30 percent of their servers and storage machines. Marshall thinks over five years, that will grow to about 70 percent, and if the conditions are right, 2011 could be a year where the growth rate could accelerate significantly.

Meet Lew Tucker, Cisco's Mr. Cloud

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 23:30:18 +0000

Cisco Systems is serious about cloud computing. If today’s news about its strategic alliance with BMC Software doesn’t make that clear, talking with Lew Tucker, Cisco’s CTO for Cloud Computing certainly will.

Tucker is a 13-year veteran of Sun Microsystems whose last job was as Sun’s CTO of cloud computing. He was also VP of the AppExchange at Salesforce.com. He’s also known for “Lew’s Law,” which he describes as more of an informal observation about how far the cost of computing can realistically fall.

I caught up with him last week in New York City to talk about what Cisco, long the powerhouse of networking, plans to do in the cloud.

NewEnterprise: First off, what is Lew’s Law?

Lew Tucker: It’s just an observation, not a real law, that the price of computing will never be free, because it requires energy to compute. Computing is really about changing the state of physical bits, and that requires energy. It’s great that we’re driving the costs down. Moore’s Law is hammering the costs. But there is a lower limit. Right now the dominant cost is around managing software, operations and everything else. So we can take a lot of those costs out through automation.

NewEnterprise: When I think of Cisco I think of industrial-strength routers and switches. How do you get from there to cloud computing?

LT: Eight months ago I thought the same thing. I was with Sun for many years and then left to go to Salesforce.com to do software as a service. I became very enamored of the Salesforce model. I came back to Sun to build the Sun Cloud, which was to be a direct competitor to Amazon Web Services. I was an Amazon user myself and I loved how you could so easily spin up as many servers as you wanted without having to buy them, configure them and so on. Building a cloud is another thing entirely. When Cisco called me, I said to them, “You’re about routers and switches and I’m all about complex distributed computing systems.” And Cisco said they were really about networking and making distributed systems. I started digging into it and realized there was a really unique position at Cisco if you think of cloud computing as a fully automated system with different elements. Some of those are networking elements, and some of those are integrated boxes with computing and storage and networking all in one. Some are networking services.

NewEnterprise: When you think about how cloud computing works, you really can’t do anything without fast connections between one system or another, which is something that Cisco knows very well.

LT: The network has always been a shared piece of infrastructure. There are a lot of different applications running on different servers that are trying to reach either each other or their endpoints. So there’s an awful lot that’s going into the network to make that happen in a fair and efficient way.

NewEnterprise: So what hardware is Cisco building here?

LT: We build pre-integrated compute, storage and networking that we’re calling our Unified Computing Systems. You can buy a rack of these systems, and they’re driven by a set of APIs [application programming interfaces]. We’re not alone in that. Hewlett-Packard does something similar. Then the customers add in their own preferred storage environment, like EMC or NetApp, or they can build their own.

NewEnterprise: What kind of use cases are you seeing in companies? What are your customers asking for right now?

LT: Right now what they are asking about is collaboration services, the integration of video and voice and calendaring and messaging. We’ve seen consumer services like Facebook change what people expect at the office. We have a collaboration product called Quad that looks just like Facebook. WebEx is a Cisco service. We’re working on offering that as both a hosted form and one that runs inside the customer’s own environment.

NewEnterprise: So there are a lot of cloud providers out there already–Amazon, Google and Microsoft, which has its Azure platform. They’ve already deployed their services and have relationships with vendors. How do you see the market shaping up, and what is Cisco’s place in it?

LT: I think there’s going to be two or three large cloud providers, but then there will be many smaller ones who specialize in delivering specialized services. Take health care. In that industry, groups of companies are going to get together and offer a HIPAA-compliant cloud. You’ll also see something similar happen around financial services. Those are two industries that have very specific needs. The cloud will be dominated by a few large providers for sure, but there will also be many specialty cloud providers.

NewEnterprise: You’ve been on the job about six months. What have you learned so far?

LT: I’ve learned that there’s an amazing amount of technology within Cisco. It has the largest concentration of network engineers in the world. Part of my job is to go and align our products and roadmaps with this future world that we’re moving into and to uncover a lot of the new approaches to how we solve different networking problems. I’m an engineer, and I like nothing better than being in a room with a bunch of other engineers with a whiteboard as they all battle it out. I’ve also learned that building cloud infrastructure is a lot harder than everyone thought.

EMC to Buy Isilon Systems

John Paczkowski — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:25:12 +0000

Another acquisition for EMC. The data storage technology supplier, which over the past five years has spent some $7 billion buying other companies, is reaching for its wallet once again. This morning, EMC announced plans to purchase Isilon Systems. Price: $33.85 a share in cash, or roughly $2.25 billion.

For EMC, the acquisition of Isilon gives it a stake in the network-attached storage space, a fast-growing market for “big data” storage (think movie studio catalogs and gene sequencing information) currently dominated by the likes of NetApp and the site of some other big acquisitions this year–Hewlett-Packard’s purchase of 3Par for $2.4 billion, for example. “The unmistakable waves of cloud computing and ‘big data’ are upon us,” EMC CEO Joe Tucci said in a statement. “Customers are looking for new ways to store, protect, secure and add intelligence to the vast amounts of information they will accumulate over the next decade.”

NetApp and Oracle to Forget About Forgotten Patent Suits

John Paczkowski — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 19:23:49 +0000

Hostilities between NetApp (NTAP) and Sun Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle (ORCL) last year, have finally ended. This morning the two companies said they had agreed to dismiss their respective patent infringement lawsuits against each other, closing out a battle that began back in 2007. Neither company offered much in the way of comment on the deal, saying only that they “seek to have the lawsuits dismissed without prejudice” and that the terms of their agreement are confidential.

What's Up With Isilon Systems?

Eric Savitz — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 23:06:30 +0000

Big move today in Isilon Systems (ISLN): shares of the storage systems company have jumped $1.08, or 19.9 percent, to $6.49, on volume of more than 660,000 shares, or more than 4x the daily average. Today’s rise boosts the company’s three-day rally to 33 percent.

So, what’s going on here?

Well, here’s what I know.

Chris Blessington, the company’s senior VP of marketing and communications, notes in an interview with Tech Trader Daily that management has been on the road getting the word out to investors, press, analysts and customers about the company’s big push into the virtualization market, where it is taking on NetApp (NTAP). Blessington notes that the company was in New York on Monday and Tuesday talking to potential investors in a series of meetings arranged by Needham & Co.

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The New Guard at NetApp

Ben Worthen — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:41:28 +0000

Storage maker NetApp (NTAP) last week named Tom Georgens its chief executive. It was an orderly succession–Georgens was the company’s president and chief operating officer, and a board member since 2008–but as with any transition, the new executive will try to put his stamp on the company.

Georgens says that one of the things he will focus on is strengthening NetApp’s relationships with systems integrators, the consulting companies that recommend and install technology for customers.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

NetApp Gives Up; Data Domain to Be Acquired by EMC

John Paczkowski — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:22:13 +0000

EMC has long claimed that its bid for Data Domain is clearly superior to NetApp’s, and today, NetApp finally agreed. After market close Wednesday afternoon, NetApp said it has terminated its merger agreement with Data Domain, giving the data storage technology vendor leave to accept EMC’s (EMC) unsolicited takeover bid–at $33.50 per share cash, an 11 percent premium over its own.

Which is exactly what Data Domain did.

One consolation: NetApp (NTAP) may have failed as a suitor, but it received a $57 million breakup fee from Data Domain (DDUP) as a result of the termination of the agreement.

Still, it’s a tough blow for NetApp (NTAP), which will now focus on “existing growth opportunities” instead of ill-starred bidding wars with rivals.

Said Dan Warmenhoven, NetApp’s chairman and CEO: “While NetApp’s acquisition of Data Domain would have produced benefits for customers and employees and complemented NetApp’s existing growth trajectory, we remain highly confident in our already compelling strategic plan, market opportunities, and competitive strengths.”

“NetApp applies a disciplined approach to acquisitions, one focused intently on creating long-term value for our stockholders.” Warmerhoven added. “We therefore cannot justify engaging in an increasingly expensive and dilutive bidding war that would diminish the deal’s strategic and financial benefits. NetApp has established leadership positions in virtualized infrastructure, storage efficiency, and unified storage, even in these difficult economic times, by helping customers meet their business objectives with less physical storage while reducing costs. That commitment will not change. We look forward to continuing to build on our foundation of innovation and customer service, and to continuing to execute our successful growth strategy.”

[Image credit: despair.com]

New from Google: Google Windows

John Paczkowski — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:00:46 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

BoomTown's Favorite Leaked Yahoo Internal Memo Ever: New PR Head Eric Brown Says Hello (and More)!

Kara Swisher — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:52:28 +0000

BoomTown has had some good leaked internal memos from Yahoo, but I have never enjoyed one quite as much as this one from newly installed Yahoo PR head Eric Brown, who started today.

While it is clear that Yahoo (YHOO) has had its troubles in understanding and offering social-networking products to its users, Brown certainly knows how to share.

Yahoo could use some of that DNA!

New Yahoo CMO Elisa Steele named Brown, a colleague from her former job at NetApp (NTAP), as SVP of global communications at the Internet giant in June.

He was the VP of corporate relations at the data storage company, on whose board Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has also served. Before that, he was at Adaptec (ADPT).

Brown is filling a slot left when former Yahoo PR head Jill Nash left Yahoo in February. She was briefly replaced by her deputy, Brad Williams, who was laid off from Yahoo in a recent round of cuts.

Like Steele, he is yet another executive from the business software arena to be hired under Bartz, who also comes from that background. Bartz also hired Jeff Russakow from Symantec (SYMC), which makes antivirus software and other security, for the post of Customer Advocacy SVP.

Yahoo’s whole marketing organization is undergoing a rejiggering under Steele, including a major brand overhaul. Along with Brown, she also recently hired Penny Baldwin as SVP of global integrated marketing and brand management.

Brown will be taking on Yahoo’s image-making, a task that has been a challenge over the last two years as the Silicon Valley icon has been buffeted by a series of external and internal challenges.

But Bartz has publicly talked about the need to now focus attention on Yahoo’s many assets and strengths.

In fact, in an onstage interview with me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in late May, Bartz said: “The best way to change the perception is to do a good job and then talk about it.”

From this memo, Brown seems like he knows how to do that.

And since he likes writers Kate Chopin and David Sedaris at the same time, it is obvious that Brown and I are on the path to become besties.

(Potential deal-breaker: I like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.)

Here’s the memo–based on a form that sources tell me all Yahoo PR folks fill out in a getting-to-know-you questionnaire, but don’t make public–in which Brown says hello to his new team:

From: Eric Brown (SVP Global Communications)
Sent: Monday, July 06, 2009 6:00 PM
Subject: It’s great to be here!

Global comms team,

Thank you so much for the wonderful intro materials you gave me. I’m going to spend quite a bit of time on the org charts, budgets, plans, and results package you compiled for me. But I’ve been especially thrilled with the personal profiles you sent my way. I’ve seen other people whose phobias are the same as mine: spiders and heights; enjoyed how many of you put Paris as your favorite place on Earth; and am impressed with how many amazing books this group has collectively read.

I must also admit to being slightly intimidated by all of you who put “bad grammar” as a pet peeve and will triple check this email to avoid any grammar infractions…

I know I have a Thursday group meeting with you, but thought the least I could do on day one is return the favor and complete my own handbook profile. So here goes…

Date I joined Yahoo!: today (6 July 2009), though I did spend two days at the senior leaders meeting in mid-June and thank all of you who were there for the warm welcome in Half Moon Bay.

What I do here: lead a team of amazing, intelligent, motivated people who put Yahoo! in the best light possible and tell our story in compelling ways that make users and advertisers around the world want to embrace Yahoo! heartily.

Where I grew up: Warsaw, Virginia–a tiny town about 90 minutes from Richmond, Virginia and 150 minutes from Washington, D.C. For those of you who are American history buffs, Warsaw is about 10 minutes from the birthplace of Robert E. Lee and 15 minutes from the birthplace of George Washington.

Where I live now: Sunnyvale, California. Can’t beat the commute.

College: William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. BA in English. Loved lit crit. Senior honors thesis was on post-WWII masculinity in American society as represented by the works of Norman Mailer.

My first job: an internship for the U.S. Navy (my parents’ employer—they were civilians) analyzing different process flow diagram software packages for a team creating warship defense systems. For the rest of high school and college, I had LOTS more fun as a waiter at dive restaurant called The Stagecoach. The food was ghastly; the people were amazing.

What I did before Yahoo!: I ran comms (PR, social media, internal comms, and exec comms) for NetApp, managing a global team of about 60+ people doing amazing enterprise and B2B work in 30+ companies worldwide. I’m very excited to learn “consumer” from all of you–and equally excited to share experiences from my almost 20 years in the business in return.

What I do when I’m not here: I love travel (had a super 3 days in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney two weekends ago), cooking (yes, seriously—cooking is very therapeutic and relaxing for me), and reading (though I haven’t picked up a Norman Mailer since my undergrad days).

If the Internet didn’t exist, what I’d be doing right now: teaching literature to high school students. I believe that at some point in my life, I have to return to society what it has given me. And I’d be a better teacher than firefighter or doctor!

Favorite place on Earth: Paris. I try to go there 3 or 4 times a year and have a couple of very close friends who are kind enough to let me crash with them. Second favorite is Hong Kong.

Proudest accomplishment: professionally–being part of the “inner counsel circle” for NetApp execs on a variety of comms and marketing issues (which I hope to be here at Yahoo! as well); personally–being a good friend, partner, and family member.

Favorite Yahoo! moment: there have only been 3 days of them so far—and all have been great. I felt very honored and lucky to be part of the Half Moon Bay leadership summit–and meeting people from all over Yahoo! there was inspiring.

Favorite book: someone who majored in literature can’t just name one, so I’ll split them into categories…Favorite works of literature: The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Favorite work that kindled my imagination: The Hobbit by Tolkien. Favorite works that make me laugh: anything by David Sedaris (the man is wicked funny).

Favorite movie: two–Moulin Rouge and Orlando–both visually stunning.

My first car: a Buick Skyhawk in a horrible shade of brown–the thing was so ratty that I had to add oil to it every other day so it wouldn’t break down–it made its last hurrah on a cross-country trip from Virginia to California and made it over the Rocky Mountains without any issues but then was quite unhappy crossing the Sierra Nevada range.

My next vacation destination: somehow I think I’m going to be very busy for the next few months so I’m not planning any big trips, though I have told a friend I’ll attend his 50th birthday party in Munich and from there I’ll try to drive to Vienna for a few days.

My hidden talent: navigating subway systems when everyone else insists on taking a taxi (the exception: Tokyo–because it is just too darned crowded).

My favorite online video: I like online videos to catch up on things that MTV no longer carries–like videos from Gus Gus (though I only see one of their videos on Yahoo! Music…)

My guiltiest pleasure: ice cream in bed with the Kindle (yes, just as Elisa put in her email)–the ice cream HAS to be Ben & Jerry’s (LOVE being on this floor with the conference room names!) and my favorite is Peach Cobbler.

I have an intense fear of: spiders and heights–I even had a spider vacuum for a while so I didn’t have to come near ‘em or smash ‘em–but then I was scared they’d survive the suction and electric shock and crawl back somewhere–so now they’re routinely smashed.

My biggest pet peeve: beating around the bush–tell me what you want me to know because I’m not telepathic and say it without a lot of metaphor or subtlety–if you really want me to know something, please make it crystal clear.

My best celebrity encounter: dinner with friends in the outdoor section of the Restaurant du Palais Royal in Paris on a gorgeous May evening–next to us was Tom Ford (at the height of his Gucci power)–I have never wanted to NOT eat so much in my life.

Something few people know about me: I abhor cava (sorry to those of you in Spain)–champagne is my favorite drink on Earth, prosecco will do in a pinch, and New World sparklings are hit and miss–but I universally detest cava.

Best for advice for working with me (yes, a little changed from what you all submitted): honesty really IS the best policy–unless I’m having a bad hair day in which case please just don’t say anything about that at all.

Thanks again for having me here–and we’ll speak more on Thursday.

Best regards,
Eric

EMC Makes Data Domain an Offer It Probably Can't Refuse

John Paczkowski — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:33:54 +0000

NetApp has cleared all necessary U.S. regulatory hurdles to proceed with its acquisition of Data Domain, though it seems unlikely that the company will prevail now that rival EMC has trumped its bid for the storage vendor.

This morning, EMC raised its offer for Data Domain to $2.1 billion from $1.8 billion, an 11 percent increase over its previous all-cash bid. Data Domain’s board had previously recommended that shareholders reject EMC’s $30-a-share cash bid in favor of a $30 cash-and-stock offer from NetApp (NTAP).

Hard to see the board doing so again now that the EMC (EMC) has sweetened the financial end of its proposal and removed some deal-protection provisions with which Data Domain (DDUP) had taken issue. With those gone, EMC’s bid is clearly superior to NetApp’s, CEO Joe Tucci claims, and it would be hard to argue otherwise.

“Over the past several weeks we’ve received strong support from many Data Domain stockholders and customers, validating our belief that EMC is Data Domain’s best choice,” Tucci wrote in a letter to Data Domain’s leadership. “With regulatory requirements now fulfilled, and in light of the clearly superior proposal we submitted to Data Domain’s Board of Directors today, we expect Data Domain to sign our definitive agreement that will deliver superior value in cash to the Data Domain stockholders in as little as two weeks.”

Data Domain has until midnight on July 17 to accept the offer.

UPDATE: NetApp responded to EMC’s announcement with the following statement:

“In response to EMC’s revised, unsolicited offer, the NetApp Board of Directors will carefully weigh its options, keeping in mind both its fiduciary duty to its stockholders and its disciplined acquisition strategy. We will provide an update shortly.”

EMC Makes Data Domain an Offer It Probably Can't Refuse

John Paczkowski — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:33:54 +0000

Data Domain has until midnight on July 17 to accept the offer.

UPDATE: NetApp responded to EMC’s announcement with the following statement:

“In response to EMC’s revised, unsolicited offer, the NetApp Board of Directors will carefully weigh its options, keeping in mind both its fiduciary duty to its stockholders and its disciplined acquisition strategy. We will provide an update shortly.”

EMC Extends Deadline for Data Domain Offer

Tiernan Ray — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:43:25 +0000

EMC (EMC) on Friday extended the period Data Domain (DDUP) has to respond to its $30 all-cash offer to acquire the company. The offer, which was previously set to expire at 12 midnight on Monday, June 29, is now extended to July 10. Data Domain has already agreed to be acquired for $30 in cash and some stock by NetApp (NTAP), and EMC has been trying to pry the company out of that agreement with the all-cash offer, which has been rejected by Data Domain management. EMC chairman, president and CEO said EMC’s offer “remains superior to NetApp’s.”

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Tech Companies Stay Close to Home for Acquisitions

Ben Worthen — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:35:57 +0000

Tech companies buy their neighbors much more often than they acquire companies elsewhere, according to a study of tech acquisitions since 2002.

The conclusion isn’t shocking. There are a number of reasons why a buyer would be more familiar with companies based nearby. They’re more likely to share investors, have employees who worked for both companies, or maybe the CEOs belong to the same golf club. But given the ongoing battle between East-Coast giant EMC (EMC) and Silicon Valley’s NetApp (NTAP) to take over another Valley company, Data Domain (DDUP), it’s instructive to see just how prevalent the preference is.

Since the beginning of 2002, publicly-traded tech companies based in California have bought 1,994 private companies, 36 percent of which have been based in the state, according to 451 Group, an analyst firm that tracks M&A activity. That’s about three times the rate that publicly-traded companies based on the East Coast bought California companies.

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iPhone 3GS on the Way

John Paczkowski — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:53:05 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Data Domain to EMC: Nix, Null, Nein, Nyet, Non, Nuh-uh, Nope, Nay…

John Paczkowski — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:00:19 +0000

What part of “No” does EMC not understand?

On Monday the company once again said its bid for the data storage equipment maker Data Domain is “superior” to a competing offer from NetApp. This, despite the fact that Data Domain earlier in the day issued a statement recommending that shareholders reject EMC’s $30-a-share cash bid and instead accept a $30 cash-and-stock offer from NetApp.

“Our Board is committed to enhancing stockholder value and, after careful review with our outside advisors, determined that the $30 per share EMC Offer is not in the best interests of our stockholders at this time,” said Frank Slootman, president and CEO of Data Domain.

Why not? Well, among other things Data Domain hasn’t been able to discuss EMC’s offer because EMC hasn’t yet accepted the confidentiality and standstill agreement that would allow it to do so. For another, Data Domain must pay a $57 million termination fee if it should abandon its deal with NetApp–and that’s on top of a host of other considerable transaction expenses.

That’s understandable, I suppose. Still, it’s difficult to see why Data Domain insists that EMC’s all-cash offer is worth less than NetApp’s cash-and-paper bid. Unless it’s doing so to force EMC’s hand deeper into its wallet. And, indeed, that may be exactly what’s happening here. Sources say. EMC (EMC) could raise its offer to as much as $35 per share to win Data Domain (DDUP) or force NetApp (NTAP) to pay more than it can afford for it. “EMC is in the win-win box and NetApp is in the lose-lose box,” a source close to the company told Reuters. “EMC can pay more than NetApp can in a reasonable range. If NetApp wants to pay at an unreasonable range, that’s good for EMC.”

Dell’s Dedupe Play

Justin Scheck — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 11:58:19 +0000

Until three weeks ago, few people outside corporate data centers knew much about deduplication technology, which makes data storage more efficient by culling repetitive documents. That changed when data storage companies NetApp (NTAP) and EMC (EMC) got into a bidding war last month for a leading provider of the heretofore obscure software.

Their target is Data Domain (DDUP), for which EMC is offering $30 a share and NetApp $25 a share. While the clash surprised people who don’t know about the technology, it was no shock for Darren Thomas, who heads Dell’s (DELL) data storage division. “We always knew” that deduplication was hot, he says.

This week, Dell jumped into the fray when it announced a new deduplication box that combines technology from software maker CommVault (CVLT) with Dell hardware. The new product – along with new deduplication services that Dell is offering – may give a hint into the company’s M&A strategy, which has been taking shape in recent months.

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Exclusive: Brand Head Olivo Out at Yahoo

Kara Swisher — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:22:23 +0000

Allen Olivo, SVP of global brand marketing at Yahoo, is leaving the company, according to sources.

The high-level departure is the latest at Yahoo (YHOO), as major executive changes continue. It was announced today internally.

Yahoo confirmed the departure in a statement to BoomTown: “After more than three years at Yahoo!, Allen Olivo is leaving the company to pursue other interests. Allen has been a dedicated and valued member of the Yahoo! team and we wish him well in his future endeavors. Allen will remain at Yahoo! for a period of time in order to ensure a smooth transition.”

Olivo ran brand marketing for the Silicon Valley-based Internet giant, which is about to undergo a major new push under CEO Carol Bartz.

Olivo was reportedly up for the chief marketing officer job, which went to former NetApp (NTAP) marketing exec Elisa Steele recently.

Olivo joined Yahoo in early 2006 and has been responsible for “overseeing all aspects of its advertising and brand marketing strategy worldwide, including design and editorial.”

He’s worked at a variety of marketing jobs, including at the San Francisco Chronicle, Robertson Stephens, Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL).

Palm Pre Gets the Thumbs Up

John Paczkowski — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:10:01 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Data Domain to EMC: I Don't Like You in That Way

John Paczkowski — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:16:20 +0000

Thought the showdown over Data Domain was over already? Think again. Wednesday afternoon NetApp (NTAP) said Data Domain (DDUP) had accepted its offer of $30 a share in cash and stock over an identical all-cash bid from EMC (EMC).

Apparently, Data Domain’s board did not find EMC’s offer to be the “win-win for both companies” that CEO Joe Tucci claimed. That said, its shareholders might. Apprised of the NetApp-Data Domain deal, EMC quickly issued a statement saying it plans go to the mat over this one. “EMC’s all-cash tender offer remains superior to NetApp’s proposed part-stock merger transaction,” Tucci said in a statement. “We are proceeding with our superior cash tender offer, which is not subject to any financing or due diligence contingency. We do not believe that the Data Domain stockholders will approve the merger transaction with NetApp. EMC urges the Board of Directors of Data Domain to not take any actions that would further impede a transaction that is a superior alternative for Data Domain’s shareholders.”

Data Domain to EMC: I Don't Like You in That Way

John Paczkowski — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:16:20 +0000