Everyone wants to tell the world how much better they are than Amazon Web Services.

HP has Meg Whitman on stage tomorrow under the big tent at HP Discover.  Larry Ellison will make his own proclamations this week when I expect he will provide a new version of cloud-in-a-box. This time though, I expect that the cloud will now be a platform in a box. Microsoft has its own news.

But look beyond the big tent theatrics and you find a war developing on another front. It’s the storage wars, with HP and IBM on the chessboard.

HP is announcing that it has achieved record backup performance of 100 terabytes per hour with HP StoreOnce Catalyst. HP’s target: EMC and its Data Domain technology. HP’s Craig Nunes said in an interview that StorOnce is a scale-out architecture. Nunes boasts that Data Domain can only do 31 terabytes per hour.

Nunes said Catalyst allows you to offload from appliance to the backup app server.

HP is also announcing:

HP Data Protector 7 software, powered by the Autonomy
Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL). It features governance tools that enable
contextual backup and recovery of information.

HP Virtual Connect DirectAttach Fibre Channel for HP 3PAR Storage. Nunes calls this a a flat SAN, offering basically offering one tier between storaage and server platform.

“We are able to connect 768 blades attached to 3Par Storage,” Nunes said.

HP wil also announce new ways to allow for easier access to public cloud infrasrtuctures whern additonal storage is needed.

IBM

IBM is getting back into the storage game with real-time analytics as its focus. Analysts and observers I talk to gave me this perpsective:

• IBM used to be #1 in storage
• EMC unseated IBM in the 1990’s and never looked back
• BM has bounced its storage division around the organization for years, sometimes as an independent organization, sometimes reporting to the systems and technology group (STG) and now reporting to STG and up to the SW group under steve mills.
• The company largely de-invested in storage for years and a few years ago went into catchup mode, acquiring XIV and more recently Storwize.
• The mainstay of the company’s strategy has been to leverage its huge portfolio of disk, tape, systems and services to compete.
• It does a lot of business in each of these but tends not to dominate any (actually it probably dominates tape but no one really cares).
• IBM is re-focusing its energies on the portfolio – trying to make it coherent and touting its virtualization and storage optimization strategy.
• One of the products IBM has (called the SAN Volume Controller – SVC) allows you to connect other vendors’ storage to the controller and it virtualizes the storage – so for stranded assets on the floor it’s a great way to keep them alive.

Key issue for IBM is can it get back it’s storage mojo? Can it leverage systems expertise combined with software and services to differentiate and gain share? We’ll see.

HP Also Needs to Find its Way

In many ways, HP also lost its way in storage – much like IBM, it was far too reliant on OEM deals. HP has recently beefed up its IP and acquired Lefthand and 3PAR as well as Ibrix. 3PAR is the shining star in HP’s storage portfolio. They’re trying to take on EMC in backup but so far it’s not showing up in the marketshare numbers. They can tout speed as much as they wish but they have to show the numbers in order to be credible in the market.

In networking, the 3COM acquisition helped HP get into the business and up until recently it looked like HP was really hurting Cisco. Servers have always been a stronghold of HP, and that’s not changed. HP’s big opportunity is cloud infrastructure and proving to its customers that it can be the broker of cloud hardware, software and services. again the problem is HP doesn’t have enough software content to dominate the way for example IBM can in this business. But HP does a lot of business and that alone gives it an edge.

On balance HP is in a transition mode. Lots of great assets, a fantastic brand but much work to do to get back to its roots of “Invent.” Frankly – that’s HP’s biggest challenge. It’s a technology company that’s no longer known for its innovation. But its customer service is still top-notch, and that may help HP stay the course as it gets back its innovation mojo.