Downsouth, great notes, thanks! My comments:
COMPETITION: they said EMC has been "shadow boxing" with their pending NAS
offering for over a year. I think Tom Mendoza said that EMC might announce
the product tomorrow and said "Let's get it on!"
Basically, I think they said the same thing everyone has said here: EMC's
Celerra/Symmetrix doesn't compete well with NTAP, how will this new lower-end
(for EMC) product compete? EMC has a problem: do they lead with Symmetrix,
server attached? Celerra-NAS? Chameliion-lower-end-NAS? Their product
set seems confused. It'll be interesting to see how they position all this.
NTAP also said that Crosstor has been sold by Auspex and MTI and NTAP has
had no issues throttling them, so what changes here now that EMC has bought
them and slaps an "EMC" label on the box?
MARGINS: they keep saying they expect margins to get hurt, it's been a few
years that they have been saying this. Sounds like the thing that hurts
margins is larger configurations with more disk drives that are lower in
margin *BUT* on those type of configurations they sell more software which
basically negates or mitigates the margin issue. Even the COO? said that
he has consistently been wrong about margin pressure. Nice problem to
have, I guess.
REVENUE: like margins, it seems like over the last two years they have
been saying revenue growth will eventually track market growth - NAS
market projected at 70% - but they continue to roll far above it. Is
the market research continually wrong or is NTAP picking up most of
the growth? Somewhere in-between?
MY QUESTION: I'm still curious about new product introductions and their
affect on revenues, but no one asked that question. I've got to believe
that it affects the sales cycle because the sales person has to deal with
the old high-end system being the new mid-range and a new high-end. It
must take a quarter to get this straightened out?
Hell, 10-15% guidance for quarter-to-quarter sequential growth and a
fiscal year target of $1.1B revenue floats my boat! |
