Data Points
XtalBall - obviously, I have no idea who or what you are, but now that I've developed a resistance to your writing style, I'm finding your posts humorous, if relentlessly cheerleading in nature.
A few points regarding storage requirements:
1) If you or anyone else is just focusing on the total future capacity requirements, you're looking at the wrong thing: the increasing capacity of disk drives will continue upward, at lower unit cost, and will address quite a bit of the demand for space. In other words, if data storage needs double next year NetApp, et al, will not be selling twice as many units, all things being equal.
2) That being said, as data protection mechanisms such as remote mirroring become more prevalent, more units will be sold to enable that mirroring.
3) I've been continually impressed by how NetApp positions itself as a moving target to its competitors; they were selling NAS devices when EMC didn't have them. Now, they're moving more and more into the management of data, just as the field of NAS competitors begins to fill.
The physical layer of storage is becoming irrelevant, as NAS and SANs merge, and new technologies like iSCSI and others take hold.
NetApp will be there with data management solutions, and I imagine that it'll be profitable for them, too.
Enjoy your weekend,
Steve |
