From talking to folks in the FC business, there's nothing special about BRCD's offering except its high price and arrogant support staff.
This is a portion of a debate between Downsouth and Craig Siebels in which BRCM crept in.
Now as a gorilla spotting mechanism I have formed a corollary rule which sometimes helps which is called the ricule, scorn and or venom rule, in which the true gorilla candidate, as the company moves closer and closer to that roost, becomes more villianized by everyone around them; ie ridiculed, scorned and or venomized. Yet, yet, the business success of this company belies these attacks in the press.
This line from Craig caught my fancy immediately: From talking to folks in the FC business, there's nothing special about BRCD's offering except its high price and arrogant support staff because it fits the rule so nicely.
Okay, if there is nothing special about BRCD's switches, the service sucks and the prices are high, then WHY THE HECK DOES IT HAVE 90% MARKETSHARE! {yes, I was screaming there at the top of my lungs;) }
In a situation like this can the explanation be G-O-R-I-L-L-A? I mean a true gorilla is a company who can afford to have nothing very special about their product in comparison to competition, poor service, and still keep high prices because that company owns the industry standard and switching costs are high.
Anyone else know much about this aspect of BRCD? I know their fiber-channel switches are proprietary, I also know of a recent move toward fiber-channel and IP, some of which requires an open standard. But does this really take away Brocade's proprietary advantage?
To put the importance of the question another way: BRCD has 90% of the business, SAN (just starting and NAS are huge and going to be enormous. BRCD provides the glue, which runs on their proprietary system between all these systems. Nothing else works within the system. Isn't this how Cisco got started?
I am terribly naive in the fiber-channel world, but given the recent {hopefully market dropping opportunity on BRCD} this is a very timely question to investigate.
Tinker |
