Symmetrix is in many ways the archetype for SANs in that it was designed to store the data for mainframes, UNIX servers and NT servers. The enabling technology for SANs is Fibre Channel. EMC and Seagate, its primary disk drive supplier, are the ones driving this industry-wide migration at the front-end and the back-end. This type of migration is not going to happen overnight. I believe EMC has sold over $500 million in Fibre channel storage subsystems over the last three years. Ciprico is another vendor that has had some success with the early adopter crowd, the folks that move digital video files.
In terms of terabytes, Compaq is the top storage player largely due to the sheer breadth of its offerings of servers particularly those for the small to medium sized businesses -- a largely NT crowd -- providing much of the unit growth in servers.
In terms of revenues, however, EMC is the top storage player -- ~35% of global revenues, 20+% operating margins -- reflecting the premium space it occupies. Put simply, a mainframe terabyte brings in more revenue than a UNIX terabyte which in turn brings in more revenue than a NT terabyte.
I think that the important thing to remember is that NT is still not ready for primetime. Compaq, Dell and the others (150+ players) may very well succeeed in value-pricing the 330 GB and below category (where EMC does not currently compete), but in the hybrid-environments -- 330 GB and above -- where mainframes and/or UNIX servers, which currently scale up to 64 processors, have to operate side by side with NT servers, which currently scale up to 16 processors, Symmetrix is still the platform of choice.
Here's an interesting snapshot of UNIX vs NT that indicates that NT is still not ready for prime time in the most lucrative segments of the enterprise. Note that I'm a longtime MSFT bull, having owned the stock in varying degrees for the last 4 years....
Unix trounces Windows NT in testing
news.com
"........The company ranks the major Unix variants and NT each year using a scorecard that judges six factors. Windows NT ranked last in every area except one.
"NT still falls short of Unix for advanced Internet protocols and extensions. NT also lags in features for scalability, reliability, availability, serviceability, and system management," the study said.......
"....D.H. Brown noted that the study doesn't reflect market share or customer satisfaction. "The industry has frequently shown that the best technology does not always win in the marketplace," the firm admitted in the study..... |
