could spell severe problems for ntap. EMC would have a huge advantage in market share, stronger value chain and strategic alliances, and lots more money to spend to promote their approach.
EMC has an advantage in market share in the slower growing segment of that market--the mainframe. NTAP is at least on par, I believe, in the high growth segment--the internet (ISPs, e-commerce). With a 90% growth rate, NTAP is growing almost 3x EMC's rate.
Can't debate the value chain argument, because I don't see EMC with a stronger one. Can you explain?
Re: strategic alliances, NTAP's alliance with Dell (OEM), Fujitsu (OEM), Oracle (strategic), Informix (strategic), Sybase (strategic), Secure Computing (strategic), Schlumberger (OEM), RADWARE (strategic), ISOCOR (strategic), Foundry Networks (strategic), Commvault (strategic), Legato (strategic), WebSpective (strategic), Intelliguard (strategic), Brocade (strategic), ...
Re: lots more money to spend. You got me there, but remember when 3-com and Synoptics dominated the "hub" market? The same brains that brought CSCO to the forefront with "routers" are working on NTAP's strategy now. There will be a compelling argument formulated and hammered into the marketplace about the advantages of NAS over SAN (appliances versus general purpose servers) for data serving. |
