Bill, I think you hit the nail on the head. Buying Sun T3 means buying Solaris OS. That will be quite an obstacle for IBM, HP, and NT/W2K shops.
To contrast this, NTAP is perceived, accurately, as OS neutral. A Unix (of any flavor) shop is already familiar with how to run the filer. Its commands are a subset of Unix. A Windows shop can use NT-like interfaces to run the filer. Both can use browser based monitor and commands.
I noted that Sun's webcast yesterday was sprinkled with "one stop shopping" and "one vendor to call if there is a problem". This is clearly an argument for its installed base to buy its storage from SUN. Protecting this base is McNealy's goal. The storage boys/girls have much wider visions, but McNealy gave them permission to repackage current products and pricebooks, formulate a software product that is not yet written, and role the product out "first and foremost" for direct attached storage to Sun Solaris servers. They also are calling NFS and CIFS services on these "new" products "NAS".
I am not a Sun basher. Their server products, JAVA, etc, are essential to their customers for good reason. |
