Scott - Bill has been advancing this argument for a while and there is certainly a basis for it - but the trend is not quite as clear as he portrays, IMO.
There are several competing pressures in the storage space. The management of large storage, and the ability of IT shops to flexibly assign, attach, and back up storage, as well as the capability to provide redundant storage over distance, has been a big driving force for traditional big shops, and has had a lot to do with the recent success of CMGI and SAN architecture.
But there is also a growing awareness that the SAN architecture as currently implemented imposes a performance penalty in comparison to direct-attached storage, and there is now pressure to go exactly the other way - with more cloely coupled direct storage attachment - as a performance alternative. The "infiniband" switch fabric I/O architecture makes this second alternative even more attractive.
While DELL could compete in either arena, they probably have a shorter path via the second route - direct attached storage. EMC can not compete in direct attached - they have no systems to attach... and the technology pieces that DELL has been picking up would fill much of the requirement for direct attach.
Another data point - despite the hype, even with current technology, direct attached storage outsells network and SAN attached storage by more than 5 to 1...
Whichever way this goes, I would expect that DELL will see good growth in storage. |
