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Technology Stocks : DSS: DLT finally open for trading -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (174)	1/19/2000 11:04:00 PM
From: Z Analyzer	Respond to of 488

EXBT replay til 10am Jan 21 800633-8284 #14179903. Library OEMs but they might not be excited about the market since EXBT has an excellent broad library line of their own and will also be competing directly against them on SDLT and LTO. Still EXBT expects 3 library adoptions this qtr. Ideally, EXBT gets both the M2 drives plus the high profit libraries for a double boost. More important question is how many server OEMs qualify EXBT. They say discussions or evaluations umderway with about 15 major OEMs and about 15 smaller. It would seem they have to or else risk losing the back-up business to VARs. We'll know who in a few months. I believe Dell is among them and SUN and IBM are traditional EXBT customers. They said one major OEM would like to announce in mid-March along with a new line of servers. -Z ;

To: Sam who wrote (174)	1/20/2000 4:12:00 PM
From: LauA	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 488

Sam - I visited Comdex in Las Vegas during November. One of the questions I specifically wanted to address was the direction of the tape drive sector. EXBT was showing in a suite at one of the hotels. I didn't bother to visit it. I toured library manufacturers and dealers. I visited OEM's and storage solution guys like EMC. (I'll confess that in recent years Comdex has been in a downswing. 1999 could be a deathknell in its present configuration. Many large players skipped. Certainly there was NO excitement. Crowds were small. Even the usual advertising signs on cabs was absent.) What I found was that everyone admitted to be blowing smoke. They feared that EXBT would actually release product, but were unwilling to accept that fact. My sense was that library guys resented the fact that EXBT made a competing product. However the folks who had dismissed EXBT in past trade shows as a has-been were not so certain. AIT guys were hoping that Sony would respond. The DLT guys were dispirited. They were under the impression that the 8000 was a hoax. A tricked up version of the 7000. The sense I got was that DLT as they knew it was at the end of its technology. SDLT was a catchy title, but would not have backward compatibility. In fact my sense was that it was essentially a new approach. The impression I got was that functioning SDLT was a long way off. LTO might be a better bet. However LTO was fuzzy because it would depend on WHO's LTO. I can see that the sales folks were pushing the old time religion, particularly the 4000 + 7000 at a cheap price. They hoped things got better in the spring to clarify SDLT v. LTO v. AIT. But if pushed, they'd show you a library that would take M2's. During the past two years these same people had slammed or dismissed EXBT. They weren't doing that this time. They just weren't saying anything. I listened to the EXBT cc and thought Marriner was being very conservative. He said that the explosive growth of DLT was referable to adoption by CPQ. I wouldn't think that a reversal by CPQ is likely, if for no other reason than I don't think CPQ can walk and chew gum at the same time. However Dell can make a decision. A choice similar to their Clariion option last year is possible. The ability to manufacture M2 is a great question. The cc seemed to address that. But? BTW my sources included ADIC and OVRL. My bias at Comdex was to examine hierarchical storage solutions. I was surprised to find these conundra in the tape business. In the context of the tech bubble, I think EXBT could be an explosive surprise. My guess is that their generic library growth is very threatening to others. Lau