One of the big news stories over the last couple weeks has been the announcement that EMC’s Atmos Online service offering will no longer be sold commercially. As you can imagine, this announcement is of great significance to Atmos Online customers, but it should not come as a surprise. As Chad over at Virtual Geek pointed out, Atmos Online was always intended to be a proof-of-concept and nothing more. He posted a good article about the changes entitled: Understanding what we’re doing with Atmos. In this article he highlights his views on the recent news. I would like to make a couple comments in regards to Chad’s article. Please be advised the views below are mine and do not reflect EMC’s stance on the topics.
In his article, Chad commented that people had a hard time understanding whether EMC was positioning Atmos as a product or as a service. My impression is that there was never any ambiguity as to whether EMC was marketing Atmos as a product. The only question was whether Atmos Online would remain a proof-of-concept or become a service offering. This became an issue when Atmos Online transitioned into a service offering earlier this year when EMC added a marketing page in addition to billing and SLAs.
By doing this, Atmos Online gave the impression that it was competing with EMC Atmos customers (e.g., service providers). Chad said, it was a mistake to stand up Atmos Online that EMC operated. I believe the mistake was turning Atmos Online into a service offering. EMC is taking steps to remediate the situation, by transitioning Atmos Online back into the proof-of-concept it was always meant to be.
Do EMC’s changes clarify the direction of Atmos? I believe the answer is yes. Now EMC can focus on the primary goal of selling Atmos as a product. I look forward to what Atmos will bring to the market in the future.
© 2010, Steve Flanders. All rights reserved.
