Mike,
Funny you should ask. I am working, keyboard in hand, on that very question.
I firmly believe that NTAP's NAS is a disruptive technology for a number of storage product niches, including EMC, Sun/HP/IBM (storage subsystems), and anyone in the large-scale RAID business.
Interestingly, EMC and Sun have both announced "NAS" solutions. However, they are not actually delivering NAS solutions that are disruptive. They are delivering NAS solutions that are continuous innovations. The reason the EMC and Sun NAS products are continuous innovations is because they are really just attaching their existing server technologies to the network and calling it "NAS". They are attempting to continue to sell their existing products (general purpose OS and file management software, hardware, etc.) on the backend of the network connection.
NTAP's NAS is much more than merely attaching a file system to the network. It is a new kind of file system that is disruptive in its ability to provide simplicity, speed, cross-protocol (NFS/CIFS) security, and reliability. It is those characteristics that make NTAP's OS, WAFL, Snapshot, Clustered Failover, etc., disruptive.
Christensen speaks at length about how disruptive innovators' products are at first for low performance niche markets and how hard those innovators work to move up market where the big money is. That describes NTAP, who started with a 486-based 8GB filer in 1993-4, is moving up market very purposefully. |
