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Technology Stocks : Vixel (vixl), a fibre channel company! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Whitmore G. who wrote (114)	10/6/1999 3:11:00 AM
From: Andrew Kruh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 377

Whitmore- Let me respond for nic, as your arguments are about as half-baked as any I have seen on SI (and that's saying something) Lets take this step by step. You start off with this gem: "I can attest to the fact that they (Sun) do not just drop suppliers on the first hint of trouble but rather build a working relationship over time through thick and thin." Thank you for dispelling all of those Sun is going to drop Ancor rumors that have been floating around. By your own admission, Sun will now stick with Ancor through "thick and thin". I feel better about my investment already. "...after having messed up the leadership as the only player in the SAN field for years..." What?! What the hell are you talking about. Ancor by its own admission has focused almost exclusively on the WAN and LAN market for years. Quite frankly, there hasn't BEEN a legitimate fibre channel SAN market until very recently, and that's still very much in the developmental stage. To imply, as you have done, that Ancor was the dominant leader in a mature market and has blown it, is both false and ridiculous. "they would have held on to the SAN market and not fallen so hard to the onslaught of better products coming from VIXEL, BROCADE and GADZOOX" I have been following Ancor closely for over three years, and to the best of my knowledge they have not lost one (that's zero, nada, nil) significant OEM to Vixel or Gadzoox. The only one they have lost at all is Sequent to Brocade (and really, that's not the whole story), who while presently significant, will in the long run be a minor player. Again, you are asserting a market reality that simply does not exist. "well you might have a whole lot more if you hadn't decided to NOT invest in Brocade just after it's IPO" Will give you a half-point on this. I wish I had the cash at the time Brocade IPO'd to invest a lot more than I did, but I didn't. Fact is this here SAN market is going to be a whopper, and many of the companies we are bickering about are going to do very well. There probably won't be an 800-lb gorilla in this market, as much as we'd all like to find one. There is too many players and politics involved between the big boys doing the distributing. Look, just get this through your head. Ancor has never, ever, not once, assumed or stated a MARKET dominance of the fibre channel SAN market. Technologically, however, is another story. Time will tell who will last as the market develops, but the Reliability Lab at Sun (that's Sun Microsystems, the projected leader in SAN solutions for the coming years) where you supposedly worked has picked Ancor switches as Best-of-Show. Where do you want to put your money?

To: Whitmore G. who wrote (114)	10/6/1999 8:01:00 AM
From: nic	Respond to of 377

Sigh, I thought a CEO was supposed to be smarter than this. Remind me to short your shares if/when you IPO. Let's take this one at a time: you might have a whole lot more if you hadn't decided to NOT invest in Brocade just after it's IPO. Not true. Right after I made that 10-foot pole remark (May 27), BRCD dropped significantly, and didn't recover until 3 weeks later. For 11 weeks following my remark, ANCR fared better than BRCD. Yes, in August the situation reversed - so I missed the opportunity to make money by chasing an insanely overvalued stock. Gee, what's new? Call me conservative, but I also won't touch Internets with a 10-foot pole, no matter how high people are hyping them. Now go take a remedial class in chart reading. - nic

To: Whitmore G. who wrote (114)	10/6/1999 8:09:00 AM
From: nic	Respond to of 377

Vixel however has 22.2M shares outstanding and a float of ONLY 4.3M shares. Read the numbers and weep! And which of these figures do you use to calculate market cap? So if I take just 1% of a company public, you'll drive that 1% up to 100x the price it deserves? Insert P.T. Barnum quote here... - nic

To: Whitmore G. who wrote (114)	10/6/1999 8:17:00 AM
From: nic	Respond to of 377

no source for it other then yourself Gee, did you ask me for my source? I must have missed that. Yes, I do have a source for that, and it's freely accessible to everyone. If you would bother to look at my recent SI posts instead of quoting old ones out of context, you'd already have a good idea what it is. - nic

To: Whitmore G. who wrote (114)	10/6/1999 8:37:00 AM
From: nic	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 377

worked for SUNW in the qualification of their computer systems in the Reliability Lab as the Lab Manager Now here's the first interesting thing you've been saying. Until when? Did you have any involvement in reliability testing of FC equipment, or any information about it? How do you explain Sun going with Ancor if their gear is supposedly so shitty? Perhaps you should call your old pals over there to get an update on what they think of Ancor's switches and Vixel's hubs these days? they do not just drop suppliers on the first hint of trouble Agreed - the problems with the Vixel hubs must have been severe for Sun to consider replacing them in the installed customer base. Of course there's the added factor of the entire market moving away from hubs to switches. - nic

To: Whitmore G. who wrote (114)	10/6/1999 8:51:00 AM
From: nic	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 377

I am fully aware that the merits of the Fibre Hub are losing favor to the Fibre Switch Apparently this doesn't stop you from extrapolating the revenue of Vixel, a hub company whose only switch product was obtained by acquisition (and is considered technically inferior), to that of Ancor, a pure switch company, from a time period when the FC hub market was doing great while the FC switch market was virtually non-existent, into a switch-dominated future where FC hubs will be virtually extinct. - nic

To: Whitmore G. who wrote (114)	11/6/1999 10:36:00 PM
From: tensforme	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 377

Whitmore G. - I am a newcomer to this board, and have taken a few minutes to read several of your lengthy and well-argued posts on the merits of ZOOX, BRCD and VIXL versus ANCR. Admittedly I know NOTHING about Fibre Channel technology - only that it will "rule the world" soon. But I must say that I found your writings very impressive. You obviously have a much better understanding (from what I can gather)of these companies and their specific products. My question to you is: Do you still feel that ZOOX, BRCD and VIXL are the top contenders for FC, and that ANCR is a has-been? So many posters here seem to have a fixation on ANCR without much substantiation. Are there any other FC companies that you like? (eg. QLGC, EMLX, JNIC) Thanks in advance for your response, and again I enjoy your writing immensely. Charlie R.