John, thread, Check this out, the big threat from Dell, that was being discussed around here: their latest foray into the storage arena is to sell NTAP technology. Not surprising since Dell does essentially no development of their own. But, how much money can they make being just the middle man? I know, not much. Buy NTAP (do your DD first though, I don't have any NTAP :-)
Dell adds to its network attached storage arsenal
By John McCright, PC Week Online
April 30, 1999 10:12 AM ET
Responding to a groundswell of demand for network attached
storage, Dell Computer Corp. next week will roll out an addition
to its line of NAS appliances.
The new mid-range and high-end NAS devices, called the
PowerVault 700N line, connect directly to a LAN and offer a
quick and relatively inexpensive way to add storage capacity.
Such storage appliances, or "filers," are gaining popularity as
demands for storage doubles every year. Market research firm
International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass., forecasts the NAS
market will grow to more than $5 billion in 2003 from about $500
million last year.
Dell's disk-based storage devices, based on technology licensed
from NAS market leader Network Appliance Inc., include a
"Snapshot" feature that automatically saves copies of file systems
in the background so that lost or corrupted files can be quickly
restored. Users can mirror a filer to a remote filer over the WAN
for disaster protection,
officials said. They also offer RAID capabilities.
I see Sun and Compaq (and IBM always) as the biggest threat because, Sun, e.g., is talking about making their server - storage combinations "more eficient together", or something like that). Not sure what they mean, since IBM has been making CPU - storage combos for decades and they lost the lead to EMC.
Heard through the grapevine yesterday that some of the "second tier" storage makers are battling on price grounds to increase their business, but EMC continues to get top dollar because they are in such high demand. Nice.
Tony |
