LK,
<<Vertically integrate the technology from a small RAID producer like Ciprico or any number of private firms or develop it in-house (it's not rocket science), and you've got a RAID box that your OEM customers would be happy to push as their own...>>
Well, it may be easy to BUILD one, but it isn't particularly easy to SELL one. Look at companies like MTI and Boxhill, who I'm most familiar with. They are in a booming market to look at EMC, but can't sell their way out of a barn. For MTI, their growth last year was primarily from selling DLT systems and libraries, and their growth this year has been, well, it hasn't been so far. They announced that they sold a system to DoubleClick yesterday, and the stock was so sold out that it jumped nearly 50% in a day! From what I can see, EMC is a pretty amazing company. I still blush to think that at the beginning of this decade I chose to hold on to SEG for many years, and occasionally traded EMC. If I had any brains it would have been the opposite.
So is this what you think MB was talking about when he talked about combining tape and drives in one network product? I found what he said vague, but I suppose it makes sense looking at it the way you see it. But one reason EMC's margins are so large is that they have a pretty big software component for managing their systems, something that QNTM would have to buy. |
