Paul, OFF TOPIC, EMC, I bought some shares back in March. Taking a little hit today, probably because of the Dell purchase of Convergenet, a small local (Si Valley) storage company that has no announced products yet! They hope to ship something later this year. Typical WS reaction to, practically, a no-op to EMC. However, Convergenet's product seems to be targeting EMC in the way that their storage box will connect on a storage area network (SAN) along with servers running any operating system. By any, they say Windows, Unix and Solaris, but no mention of S390. EMC pioneered the technology of being able to connect to any server, regardless of OS. So, maybe the uninitiated think the new Dell company is a threat to EMC because of that.
EMC has the lead over 2nd place IBM, something like 35 to 21%, in storage, and the lead has been lengthening. Recent announcement to buy Data General, older and beleaguered server/storage company was met rather coolly, as was HP's decision to re-sell Hitachi storage instead of EMC. Cost was the main reason, I think. CEO Mike Ruettgers is considered one of the best, and from him on down, EMC has a reputation for unmitigated, but efficient dedication to the company. To me, this is one of the best long term winners in tech. Also, storage sales have been growing faster than have CPUs, expected to remain that way. Then again, all the reports recently show CPUs taking off again. So, storage, and servers for the Internet may just be the hottest tech area (well, along with Internet backbone Cisco type hardware and software). Good luck.
Tony |
