The JAZ and paradigm shifts
Mary,
Despite my personal caution in the earlier post, I think
it's wise for us all to speculate together here about just
how the JAZ is going to be put to use. There's that initial
trial hurdle for it to get over, but if price and durability
work out okay later on in 1996, then we long-term IOMG
investors are going to have to second-guess the JAZ's
prospects pretty quickly. I'm quite confident that it'll
drive the streaming tape backup into extinction if it
passes its initial trial. (That is, either it will or
its competitors will; IOMG _may_ get competition here
in ways it can't with the Zip, since the JAZ is still
a hard drive technology. I don't know enough about the
JAZ to know that it can't be essentially cloned by the
commodity hard drive folks, though the latter's failure
to come up with a JAZ-like product long ago makes me
think IOMG has something going for it that can't be
duplicated easily, if at all.) Just the backup niche
will make the JAZ a good source of revenue for IOMG,
but it won't have that nice paradigm-shift quality
that Young won't let us forget.
So, all you pair-o-dime enthusiasts, speculate away
about the JAZ, please. It'll help us all be prepared
for the future, just in case. But don't put your money
where your mouth is, at least not yet, unless you're
more of a gambler than I am. For now, I consider the
JAZ a winner as a backup device, provided it returns
safely to port from its shakedown cruise.
Cheers, Tom |
