Here is a selection of some analyst comments
regarding Compaq's storage business:
Daniel Kunstler, JP Morgan
"Also, the numbers on the storage business look good, with 14% year-over-year growth, including 70% in network-attached storage. This tells us that Compaq's storage activity (about $7 billion in annual revenues) may be in a somewhat better position to with stand mounting competition than we would have otherwise assumed."
Robert Cihra, ING Barings
"With storage sales larger than its Intel server sales, Compaq is a much bigger storage player than most recognize. And, although the bulk of its business comes from integrated storage attached to Proliant servers, Compaq's fastest growing segment is its external enterprise storage unit, "StorageWorks," which it acquired through Digital."
Gardner, Salomon Smith Barney
"Within Enterprise, storage is clearly a fast growing, high-margin opportunity and Compaq will attempt to establish itself as a credible, independent supplier of storage systems during 2000, but we believe Compaq's storage growth throughout 2000 will depend largely on the company's success in high-end servers/solutions."
Jonathan M. Ross, ABN AMRO Inc
"Looking to storage to drive growth Storage revenue increased 6% sequentially--particularly comforting were statistics on external storage growth, which are the building blocks of the SAN-based, next-generation storage architecture. Sales grew 21% sequentially from 3Q99 and a whopping 70% year-on-year. Management noted storage demand remains strong, and Compaq's services division continues to drive demand creation. We believe Compaq has a great opportunity to ride the storage wave given its strong market positioning in open systems (the fastest-growing storage market where Compaq is the market-share leader), and look to storage to become one of Compaq's primary growth engines over the next few years. Industry standard server revenue grew by an impressive 13% sequentially, signaling a wealth of opportunities for Compaq to attach storage to server wins." |
