Tape sucks, sniffs EMC

EMC World It does not compute; EMC resold $25m of tape products from Quantum in 2010 but has just declared "Tape sucks" to thousands of attendees at EMC World in Las Vegas. This isn't channel conflict; it looks like out and out war.

Or not - no one on the Quantum booth at the shindig seemed at all offended by EMC's anti-tape keynote blast. The rousing speech was delivered by BJ Jenkins, the boss of EMC's Backup and Recovery Systems division, and Stephen Manley, his trophy chief technology officer recruited from NetApp.

During the pitch Google was mocked and derided for recovering lost Google mail files from tape in the recent email outage when mail files on disk were lost. Instead of this being presented as a triumph for tape, it was represented as showing the need for Google to have good disk-based data protection scheme, with Data Domain and Avamar being the ideal choice.

Wells Fargo bank SVPs came on stage to extol EMC's disk-based protection products and ideas. Meanwhile staff on the Quantum booth are happily telling booth visitors that EMC has sold Scalar tape libraries to banks because the banks demand tape.

Don't they know the score? BJ has spoken. Stephen Manley has emoted. Tape sucks. Or it doesn't, because EMC resells Quantum tape, and Quantum has been EMC's top Select partner for the past nine years. It just does not compute. ®