[Dway] ...filer equivalents...theoretically...competitor with a lot of money and a couple of years
[DS] Gotta take serious exception to that...the speed, reliability and simplicity of NTAP's filers... ...are simply not available from anyone else.
Agree, no serious competitors, including EMC IMO, now or on the horizon.
But, there's no proprietary concept here AFAIK, and there's nothing magic about the drives or front end or OS or utilities. What one group can develop, so can another, given time and money. I don't think it's likely that any competitor will appear in the next couple of years, but if some big company thinks the NAS market is big enough, they have the ability (read 'money') IMO to develop filer et al equivalents. Keep in mind that a competitor could simply copy NTAP's business model and largely copy the hardware and software conceptual architecture to give themselves a running start.
For example, NTAP hardware designers are (I assume) well paid, but who is inhuman enough not to jump ship if someone offers them a couple hundred K a year plus big stock options?
- Dway |
