HP’s 3PAR passes EVA in sales

Hewlett-Packard’s storage team maintains it remains committed to the EVA midrange platform, and continues to upgrade the product. But you have to wonder how long that commitment will remain as the company faces restructuring and EVA sales keep dropping while 3PAR’s soar.

HP CEO Meg Whitman characterized HP’s storage as “a tale of two cities” during the company’s earnings call Wednesday. “3PAR continued to gain strong traction in the marketplace, growing more than 100 percent year-over-year,” she said. “At the same time, tape and EVA are declining. This is an anticipated product transition and we’re effectively managing the shift to our next-generation storage arrays.”

This trend has been ongoing ever since HP acquired 3PAR in late 2010. HP CFO Cathy Lesjak added on the call that 3PAR has replaced EVA as the vendor’s largest revenue storage array. She said the two midrange platforms grew a combined 19% year-over-year compared to one percent overall storage growth. That means without 3PAR, HP’s storage revenue declined.

HP said its StoreOnce deduplication software nearly doubled in revenue, but that product had little revenue a year ago before it was relaunched last November.