As you know, it is not, in the long run, how the street views NTAP. It is, in the long run, how the storage market views NTAP. The story has just begun and NTAP knows it. They have the vision, the marketing know-how, the technical know-how, and the cash to execute their plan. Their plan makes sense to me (end-to-end content management) and not a single other vendor (not even one!) has stated that they are after that vision. How obviously right that vision is!
It should be reiterated at this point that the storage market is owned (75%) by the box makers and almost all of what they sell are direct attached, SCSI ported disk drives, some with RAID capabilities. As DW said last week, the challenge is to educate the buyers of these boxmaker-supplied disk arrays to the advantage of the filer appliance concept. The market for storage is already $17B and growing. |
