Hi JDN - I know that SUNW has invested capital in the high end storage sector, but I really have not heard or read anything that provides any indication of how successful they have been. Perhaps lurkers can post other articles on this subject.
Here is one that shows that SUNW has acquired the technology to compete head-to-head with EMC... (May 28, 1997)
sun.com
from the article: "...The deal would be a good one for Sun, according to John Young, vice president of enterprise systems planning with the Clipper Group, a research firm based in Wellesley, MA. He says that Encore's Infinity SP product is not just another storage box. "What the Infinity SP provides is the ability to share data between traditional mainframe and open systems environments by using a single copy of data" -- something that high-end storage vendors like EMC Corporation and Hitachi are not expected to deliver until the end of 1997 at the earliest, according to Young..."
2) Sun to unveil Fibre Channel storage array
InfoWorld Electric (Posted at 5:03 PM PT, Oct 17, 1997)
idg.net
3)Sun Adds To Open Storage Model With New Fibre Array
(Wednesday, October 22, 1997)
techweb.cmp.com
From the article: "...Continuing its promised move beyond its Solaris orientation, Sun Microsystems is readying new Windows NT-based storage hardware..."
Both EMC and STK sell into this market. According to the CEO of STK (from his interview on CNBC 3/23 ). He estimated total sales of multi-user Windows NT storage devices from all vendors will be $4.8 billion in 1998, and the market will grow at least 33 percent each year until 2001.
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To summarize, SUNW has announced many new storage products in late 1997 which should begin to be reflected in our quarterly revenues and earnings. Based on the current results of EMC and STK, I believe many of the analysts that follow SUNW have underestimated how well SUNW is doing in this area. I am a bit unclear weather SUNW is doing well in this business, (1) there would be more industry reviews on SUNW's storage products, (2) SUNW should have issued more press releases and PR announcements to current and future customers regarding these new products, and (3) both analysts and investors would recognize the new revenues from this line of business and there would be more discussion in their company reports (i.e. very little discussion in the MS report that Alok posted No. 8390 ( Message 3768287 ) on 3/18/98).
EKS |
