Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg Hull who wrote (15580)	1/18/2000 9:12:00 PM
From: Greg Hull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

Sir Galahad, You have pointed out to us that most Fibre Channel connections have been over copper instead of glass. This appears to be changing. In the January issue of Lightwave (http://www.light-wave.com but not available online yet) in the Trends section, a product marketing manager from Molex is quoted on a shift to fiber. Molex makes components for both copper- and fiber-based Fibre Channel applications. Here are some quotes from the article: "At 1 Gbps, more than half of the market right now is using optics" [my note: quarter gig networks were common a couple years ago] "All the new designs, as far as I can tell, are incorporating optics" "sees growth in the demand for equipment with optical interfaces as the length of SAN connections increases" "We see a lot of movement toward the 2 Gbps Fibre Channel ... I think that will have a larger optical emphasis, but there will still be a copper version of it, I'm sure" "I think it's likely that the next rate move will go from 2 gig to 10 gig - and 10 gig FC will be heavily optics. I don't know if they'll do an electrical version at all at that speed." Copper still has a cost advantage over a glass physical layer, so they are still used for shorter, or lower speed, connections. This cost differential is decreasing. I'm sure this is enough FC for everyone for now. Greg

To: Greg Hull who wrote (15580)	1/19/2000 4:57:00 AM
From: DownSouth	Respond to of 54805

Can you think of any of their software offerings that will distinguish (significantly) them from NTAP for the next few years? EMC's direction as a software company for SAN is really quite a good one. Their software could become an over arching umbrella monitoring and controlling the use of heterogenous storage area networks composed of subsystems provided by IBM, SUNW, NTAP, and EMC's own subsystems. EMC will continue to play well in the IBM mainframe world, where NTAP has no interest.