QLGC & ANCR merger emphasis on Infiniband
is.pennwellnet.com
By Zachary Shess
QLogic last month announced plans to purchase Fibre Channel switch
vendor Ancor Communications in an approximate $1.7 billion stock swap.
Officials at Aliso Viejo, CA-based QLogic say the acquisition will enable
them to broaden their Fibre Channel product line while positioning the
company to address future market issues and technologies.
"We see SANs [storage area networks] growing dramatically," says Larry
Fortmuller, vice president of marketing at QLogic, "and as they grow, host
bus adapters become a lower percentage of the overall SAN purchase
because we're moving to switched environments. We want to address as
much of this market as possible."
While QLogic and Ancor will pursue Fibre Channel and other SAN
opportunities near term, down the road the merger could be remembered
as the precursor to the companies' first substantial step toward developing
InfiniBand-compliant technology.
"I think this merger provides a strong InfiniBand infrastructure provider,
both on a switch and an HBA level, and then a router level at some later
date," says Richard Lee, president of Data Storage Technologies, a
consulting firm in Ridgewood, NJ. "I think the merger is less for the Fibre
Channel future and more for the InfiniBand future."
Fortmuller acknowledges that InfiniBand development was one of the
considerations of the merger. Combining the companies gives them an
opportunity to approach InfiniBand from "a much broader perspective than
just a host bus adapter manufacturer," says Fortmuller.
The current InfoStor Issue also contains SAN articles on CPQ, SUNW, HP, and storage software vendors:
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