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Technology Stocks : Network Appliance
NTAP 117.28+1.1%3:59 PM EST

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To: DownSouth who wrote (3303)5/17/2000 11:36:00 AM
From: Bill Fischofer  Read Replies (1) of 10934
 
Thanks for the critique

The way I look at it is storage systems today is where networking was a decade ago--just really starting to break free as a separate industry which for its entire history has been completely dominated by the processor-centric mindset. Both EMC and NTAP are attacking the new industry from somewhat different angles. EMC is focusing on the enterprise core and NTAP seems more focused on the edge. In this the "rivaly" is perhaps best viewed as analogous to CSCO and COMS in the early 1990s.

As far as who is disrupting whom, the key to my mind is to look at the evolving role of storage. NTAP seems comfortable with the current processor-centric world order and is content to be a "better peripheral" to that order. EMC, by contrast, is intent on disrupting the current world order and completely reversing the traditional role between processor and storage. In this new paradigm, storage moves to the center of the enterprise and processors quite literally become peripheral to the storage network. Instead of a central processor surround by a "disk farm" the movement is towards a central storage network surrounded by a "farm" of diskless "server peripherals".

In this model EMC is not really competing with NTAP. Rather, they are competing with SUNW, HWP, and IBM for overall IT dominance at the center of the enterprise.
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