OT re storage equip winners:
1. the only way nobody wins, is if the market doesn't grow, or it becomes a commodity. Everywhere I look, everyone is needing to store more data, so I'm pretty sure the market will grow. The question of commoditization is more difficult. The hardware components on NTAP's boxes are commodities (disc drives, memory), or near-commodities (intel processors). But the software isn't, and that's proprietary. The value-added for NTAP and EMC is in the software, although they are classified as hardware companies. Commoditization hasn't happened yet in this industry. The current price cuts are a response to the sudden fall-off of demand, and I expect pricing power to return once the macro picture clears. But this is a risk for the future, I agree.
2. IBM beating NTAP and EMC? Are you joking? If IBM was going to use its size and brand name to crush EMC, they would have done it 10 years ago. They've been trying, and failing, consistently, through the 1990s. NTAP's worry is EMC, or an upstart with a some new architecture that hasn't been dreamed of yet. |
