JDN, I agree with your advice about NTAP having two strong companies going after their market, a small nitpic if I may make a pain in the *** of myself. The word purely here:
they now have two Goliaths focusing purely on their market (CPQ and EMC),
makes it sound, maybe, like they're focusing completely on the NAS market. Not quite of course, as EMC has the SAN market and CPQ has computers from PCs to "million dollar Nasdaq quote banks" (Himalayas), besides storage.
I looked at the specs for the CPQ Tasksmart NAS box. It's a combination of technologies from their industry leading Proliant servers (dual Pentium III, motherboard, etc.) and their Storageworks storage products (drives, controllers, DLT tape, etc.). So, you know they'll be able to build the new unit at very low cost, as component procurement, assembly, manufacturing and test for the new product will fit right in with the existing products. Tremendous economies of scale will take place here because of volume buying, etc. of parts that are essentially all used in existing products.
EMC's advantage for their NAS products is probably in sales pull-through along with their industry leading SAN and related software products.
Good call about the huge new pressure on NTAP.
Tony |
