EMC joins Storage Performance Council

In a few days' time, EMC will sign up and join the Storage Performance Council, notwithstanding how much it has dissed benchmarks in the past.

The SPC produces storage array benchmarks which suppliers can run and so enable their kit to be compared on a level, albeit artificial, playing field with their competitors.

EMC senior bloggers including Chuck Hollis have famously criticised the SPC in the past. For example, see this Does Anyone Take The SPC Seriously? post by Chuck from July 2007. Sorry Chuck, but I can't resist this – who's chuckling now?

Our understanding is that EMC, having spent more than a decade dissing SPC benchmarks, is now joining said organisation as an associate member. What could have prompted that?

It can't be the prospect of seeing its storage arrays hammered into the benchmark also-ran dust by the likes of Dell, HP, NetApp and others. Surely it is the opposite. Hopkinton has some hot boxes and is about to show them off as screaming past competitors' arrays on the very SPC ground they claimed as their own in the past, hinting that EMC wouldn't submit its kit for benchmarks because, well, ahem ... it wouldn't cut much of a dash.

This EMC reluctance has changed recently and EMC and NetApp have been leapfrogging each other with benchmark wins. We can expect much more of this now. Let the benchmark battles begin. ®