A clearly briefed Barrons' guy says EMC will have a Harley Davidson motorcycle fly over storage arrays during its VNX launch-fest.

Other stunts to be included in 18 January's "Records Will Be Broken" webcast include cramming more people into a Mini Cooper car than ever before. These cunning stunts are to emphasise that the new VNX arrays are low-priced and will undercut equivalent arrays from Dell, NetApp, HP and IBM.

The low-end VNXe will be priced from $9,500, less than Dell's equivalent array, we're told.

On Saturday, this writer received a cardboard replica of an LP record cut into pieces as a reminder of the 19 January launch event. Why all this launch extravaganza? Is EMC that rattled by NetApp's success in selling storage for virtualised servers?

Whatever the reason, it will have to sell a boatload of the VNX products just to pay for all this launch hoopla. ®