I don't know who all handled the Brocade IPO. I do know that part of it was handled by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter - $71,000,000 at least. I'm too lazy to buzz through the Internet this morning and find the entire list, but I'm sure going to Brocade's web site might be a place to start for that information. However, it is - or can be - a critical factor to know exactly who has sponsored these technology companies when it comes to weighing analyst's and brokerage house recommendations. That's obvious.
In the FC switches market (a product that allows storage devices to communicate with one another), Brocade Communications Systems commands 80 percent of the market for the switches. There is a definite game going on here between Brocade, Ancor Communications and Gadzoox for these switches. Paul Johnson's remarks were in regards to this game and that if there was an emerging leader, it had to be Brocade in the FC switch market thanks to their 80 percent market share. Although the IPO was indeed a hot rocket, I did buy shares in anticipation of the strength this tornado was creating. I'm not here to present it as a gorilla candidate yet. Ha! I'm just responding to a couple of previous posts and happy to see another thread member saw enough in this company to invest outside of my investment. Tom, I guess we better get digging and start to present a case on the technology adoption life cycle and the game that Brocade is currently involved.
Red Herring (December issue) has a small article on Ancor and the competition on page 380. Typical gaming talk can be found in the article:
["Brocade benefited from being a hot Silicon Valley startup with a hot IPO, but Ancor's technology is on par, if not better," says Shaw Wu, an equity research analyst with Bear Stearns. "Thus far we've only seen round 1 of a 30-round fight." Round 2 is looking good for Ancor. The company recently landed several sizable contracts from the likes of Sun Microsystems, Hitachi, Advanced Digital Information, and MTI Technology, so it seems Ancor has already begun to steal a nice chunk of Brocade's market share.]
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah......the article is a tout for stocks to watch which include Apple, Nortel and Ancor. Of course the analyst is going to promote Ancor which is a company that reinvented itself from LAN to FC switches over the past two years. The stock fell to $1 a share during that transition. If Brocade has 80 percent of the market already which is in full tornado, how can we assume that Ancor is 'stealing' a nice chunk of market share? If his statement is true that Ancor's technology is "on par, if not better" that this means a game could be won? I think we all know the answer to that question. I don't think that this section of the market is going to be a 30 round fight as Mr. Wu suggests. Yes, a few rounds, but 30????
If anyone is interested, I will dig deeper. My interest in the company was one of my typical 'holistic approach' processes to technology investment where I buy a basket of picks and tools which I feel are poised to benefit. My basket includes EMC, NTAP, Brocade and Inktomi (cache) at this time as I believe this non glamorous portion of storage and tools to allow that storage to run well will continue to be very important going forward thanks to web centric and Internet data exchange.
I apologize if this material and thought is not organized as it should be.
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