No need in looking, Unq. No one is licensing NTAP ipr. I believe that NTAP is using patents to protect its advantage, (like CSCO).
An interesting train of thought. CSCO dominates by being the market leader, maintaining barriers to entry, superior sales and service, aggressive acquisition of new technology. Patents protect their products and ideas. CSCO does not "own" the enabling technology like MSFT and INTC do.
Actually, the parallels between CSCO and NTAP go deeper. CSCO did not invent internetworking. Internetworking (routing) was being done on general purpose computers. CSCO too that functionality and placed it on a special purpose computer which did the job much better and cheaper than general purpose computers do. NTAP is serving data on special purpose computers much faster and more reliably than general purpose servers can do. NTAP, like CSCO, is also serving data in multiprotocol environments (NT and UNIX).
I will argue that NTAP is a candidate for Gorilladom. If CSCO can achieve Gorillaness in a standards-based world (TCP/IP), then NTAP can achieve Gorillaness in a similar standards-based world (UNIX -NFS, NT -CIFS). It will do it the same way that CSCO did. NTAP products will perform a function (serving data) much better than anyone else can. It will experience very rapid growth (90%+) as it dominates a rapidly expanding marketplace (e-commerce infrastructure). It will protect its position by engineering, acquiring, and patenting technologies that will keep the barriers to entry high, will crush its competitors, and it will provide a level of customer support and service that will assure its growth.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it! |
