monolithic
Can't imagine even if Dell had a monolithic array that (m)any people would buy it from them. IBM and HP of course have big iron boxes which fit these arrays well, Dell obviously does not. The big array market seems saturated anyway as it continues to slowly decline, as more mid range systems get top tier capabilities.
You don't see HP talking about the P9500 all that much. I was at a mini HP event a few weeks ago where we spent the ENTIRE DAY talking about storage. Not *ONCE* was P9500 (HDS OEM) mentioned. Also not once was EVA mentioned (not surprising). It was all 3PAR, Lefthand, IBRIX, and they were going to cover MSA but we ran out of time. You also don't see P9500 in really any of the marketing materials on HP storage. I saw a keynote from David Scott(former 3PAR CEO of course) at another event the next day and again not once was P9500 mentioned.
I wonder if Dell should go a completely different direction, and acquire one/more of these grid compute/storage combo companies, it would at least allow them to significantly differentiate themselves from the other big players.
I still think the Dell storage strategy has been a good one(at least composed of good parts individually), it is just taking a while to bring the parts together. If it turns out they can't effectively integrate all the parts then I suppose I'd change my view..