Nevin,
You're absolutely right. I was rambling a bit and I should have organized my thoughts better. The point I wanted to make is that Adaptec still appears attractive to me. I almost always buy computers with SCSI drives and I *require* Adaptec controllers; I have disqualified bidders for proposing ''equivalent" ones and I will continue to do so. Yes, I pay a premium for that at times, but I get the performance I require and that is all there is to it.
I am also impressed with what I have seen of their fibre channel products. Yes, lots of small companies keep coming up with various ways of squeezing more performance out of various SCSI setups, but for the future, fibre channel is the way to go. No question about it.
And let us not forget about Firewire. As far as I can tell, Adaptec has taken a leadership position in this area and remember that this is intended for *consumer* devices. Wait till all camcorders come with this interface as standard and people want to play with their moves on their PCs.
Then there are the satellite broadcast interfaces. Adaptec has two very important agreements in this area and I expect them both to result in serious revenue. The Internet is pretty congested and while parts of the World is solving that problem via cable, lots of places do not have the infrastructure to do that and a satellite hookup is a lot simpler.
The company of course has other products as well and they will also contribute. Key to me is for them to continue their move into ''bandwidth management". If they can come up with a nice uniform strategy in this area and keep the quality of their products up, they have a long term winner.
No, I am not totally blind to the problems they are facing now. But I haven't heard anyone suggest that they are unable to meet their expenses..... They are still profitable you know. And they have been for a long time.
Cheers, Torben |
