UF, I agree with your "hope that ntap might surprise". Of course, there is little doubt that NTAP will hit its numbers and will finish the year with $1.1B in sales. I am not looking for anything more than +.$01.
NTAP has been hurt by the dotbomb, but has made up for those lost sales with success in the Fortune 1000, I believe. They are working hard and hitting hard in the financial sector and perhaps we will hear more about that on Thursday, as an example.
They are now in their 4th quarter. Knowing how innovative Mendoza is, I'll be he pulls out all of the incentive stops to get his boys and girls producing at record rates. He has been know to do such things as promise a club trip an any rep who blows through their numbers the 4th quarter, regardless of what the rep did the first 3 quarters. That will get results.
It's also time to get some excitement in the streets about the upcoming low-end (sub $20K) filer and the DAFS/VI architecture which will change the rules for performance and scalability and sell lots of software.
I have turned the corner on this cc, expecting nothing but good news and optimism forward looking.
EMC's Chameleon has fallen flat on its face. They are using it as a loss leader to bring in more Symmetrix sales, then calling the whole thing a NAS sale, I have heard. The formulat is simple: "Hey, how about adding that Symmetrx box you want next quarter right now. We'll throw in a NAS box for free, just so you can try it out." Boom! A NAS order!
This can only work in their favor for EMC for a little while. NTAP's strategy for end-to-end content mgt/distribution is the right thing at the right time. |
