then EMC would become the undisputed gorilla in that field. Or, are they already?
There is a market segmentation here that is not well understood. EMC is the gorilla for mainframe storage. Perhaps IBM sees an opportunity to make money by selling storage to EMC. EMC is winning, so IBM may as well make some profit from that!
But back to the segmentation. I believe that NTAP is the gorilla in "network attached storage". That is not the same as mainframe storage. EMC is currently trying to get into that market, but according my friends at NTAP, EMCs products are slow, unreliable, and complex--which is ok on the raised floor, but unacceptable in the server closet. EMC's successes with NAS have mainly in their own customer base where the mainframe guys are making the decision.
To illustrate further confusion in products and market segments, the article you cited has the following statement:
"But a Cisco touches on competition with both EMC and Network Appliance in certain areas such as network caching. So it could also be the case that we consolidate. As the winner there emerges, we could sell something and put more of our eggs in one basket."
This tells me that the speaker is fuzzy on the difference between network caching and network attached storage. (Thank NTAP for that, as they are the only provider of caching on an NAS appliance.) CSCO is not in the storage business, but they do have a caching offering. If CSCO becomes the gorilla of caching, NTAP will continue to benefit from its NAS appliance. EMC, to my knowledge, is not in the caching business. So how does CSCO "touch" EMC?
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