Bob, regarding Brocade's "win" at CMNT, in Ancor's backyard, that particular announcement was posted and discussed a bit earlier in the week, although not for long and not in much detail. To summarize the thoughts of some: A deal with CNT looks like a pretty insignificant development compared to Inrange, SGI/Prisa and Forefront, if only because CMNT has a very small revenue base (somewhere around $100 million annually, although maybe the run rate is a bit higher because of CMNT's last quarter), has not enjoyed a great deal of success in terms of profitability ($.04-08/quarter profit, or even losses in certain quarters in the last several years). Under these circumstances, it is not at all clear how much switch business anyone is going to receive from or through CMNT. It may be that Brocade is hunting for whatever it can get now, even business which may not be terribly profitable, or business which actually was won some time ago before the appearance of the MKII 8-port switch which was the subject of strong commentary as to price point and performance in the recent Ancor OEM announcement). Bottom line: it is very difficult to determine what any particular announcement means at this point in terms of the competitive features and the amount of revenue. That announcement says nothing about revenue anticipated, and the Ancor announcements concerning SGI and Forefront also left us to speculation.
On the other hand, neighborhoods, appear to be less and less important. If they were, perhaps McData, including the former part of HP's Canadian operations acquired by McData would have let to a victory at Forefront, and perhaps Silicon Valley-based Brocade would have won the SGI/Prisa business. Instead, it appears that decisions are being made on a variety of reasons, at time unknown, and that both Ancor and Brocade will have a substantial amount of business. It sure would be nice to see head to head competition, NOW, between the two products. Perhaps that is what is happening at Jaycor, and we will learn, as we may have with Prisa, that initial decisions in favor of Brocade are now changing given the enhancements that Ancor has delivered.
Just my 2 cents. |
