Dell EMC is not yet publicly talking about the launch of its much anticipated mid-range storage system, MidRange.next, but planning is very much underway.
Because of Dell EMC’s market position, the industry is watching closely.
MidRange.next replaces Dell EMC’s Unity, XtremIO and SC arrays, and is due to be completed by the end of February. Jeff Clarke, Dell EMC vice chairman for products and operation, said in November last year: “We will have the product completed by the end of the fiscal year and it will be released. “
MidRange.next represents the consolidation of Dell EMC’s three mid-range arrays into a single product line. The announcement data was set to take place in September last year but then delayed.
We expect MidRange.next will have a Power-something moniker to fit in with Dell EMC’s Power-based branding scheme – eg, PowerMax, PowerSwitch, PowerEdge and PowerProtect. The PowerStore trademark is currently owned by Dell Technologies.
Earlier this month a Dell EMC spokesperson told Blocks & Files: “I’m happy to share we now have a number of early access customers, and feedback to date has been very strong. Customers are excited with what they’re seeing. I’ll be back in touch soon with more details on our broader launch plans.”
Now we have received an update. Dell EMC emailed us this statement: “Customers have taken part in Midrange.next’s early access program since Q4FY20 and feedback to date has been very positive.”
Good. So when is the launch?
“Based on the opportunity to address feedback from our early access program and the fiscal year-end selling cycle on existing storage deals, we made the decision to launch Midrange.next general availability this spring. Ahead of the launch, we’re gearing-up by educating our sales force at several, annual global and regional events over the next few months.”
That means the March-April-May period. There is a Dell Technologies World event in Las Vegas, May 4-11. We think that Midrange.next aka PowerStore will be announced then.
A look at the agenda shows nothing indicating any new mid-range system. It includes breakout sessions on the to-be-replaced SC, Unity XT and XtremIO arrays:
- Dell EMC SC Series: Performance Best Practices Dell EMC SC Series: Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
- Dell EMC SC Series: Performance Analysis & Troubleshooting
- Dell EMC Unity XT: A Multi-Cloud Flash & Hybrid Platform
- Dell EMC Unity XT: Virtualization & Application Integration
- Dell EMC Unity XT: Performance Best Practices
- Dell EMC Unity XT: Performance Analysis & Troubleshooting
- Dell EMC Unity XT: NAS & File Capabilities
- Dell EMC Unity XT: Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
- Dell EMC XtremIO X2 Ecosystem: CSI, SRM, and vRO
- Dell EMC XtremIO X2: Native Replication Deep Dive and Demo: Metadata-Aware Async and Newly Introduced Sync Replication
- Dell EMC XtremIO X2: Mixed Virtualized Workload Best Practices
The lack of any mention of the MidRange.next system in the agenda could be strategic.
Dell EMC’s spokesperson said: “Dell Technologies remains the undisputed storage leader, and we’re continuing to take share and drive momentum in key storage categories over the past eight quarters. In Q3, our storage business grew 7 per cent and, over the past two years, we’ve taken 375 basis points of storage share.
“We expect to continue this momentum with the launch of Midrange.next. It’s an important moment in the industry, and we’re excited by what the product will offer our customers. When they are ready to migrate to the platform, we have designed the offering to allow them to do so quickly and seamlessly from Dell EMC storage products including VNX, SC Series, PS Series, Unity and XtremIO.”
