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Technology Stocks : Network Appliance -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sasha4477 who wrote (2145)	1/20/2000 6:07:00 PM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

Quite a few questions there, but darn good ones. I cannot condemn him as harshly as you because his understanding of the technology is more advanced then my own. I was hard on him, I guess, but this guy gets paid to understand and readers probably believe he knows what he is talking about. I suspect he got is info from an EMC type who don't understand NTAP NAS either, from my experience. Interesting that his conclusions were not exactly 100% pro-EMC. What I would like to know from you or others is whether you disagree with the conclusions of the article. They are as I recall that NTAP is the only play in the NAS arena and that Ntap breaks new ground with its SAN-NAS collaboration and is a leader in cacheing. I do believe that NTAP is the only play in NAS. NTAP is the King, as defined by "The Gorilla Game". All other NAS competitors are in the very low end. The threat of SUNW is minimal. They have failed once with a NAS solution. Their traditional storage solutions are THE competition against NTAP, but NTAP is the only viable, industrial strength NAS solution. And NTAP is making money and increasing its market share. WRT to caching, that really is a different market. What NTAP does though is combine its Filer platform with its WebCache software creating the only caching appliance. Their focus on this market is likely to bring them to be the top player there. They may dominate eventually. NTAP is doing some behind the scenes collaboration with BRCD. They won't talk about it, but I assume that is what the author is alluding to. What is the niche that SAN is likely to occupy if indeed NAS is the superior technology. Why would SAN survive at all unless it has some useful purpose. Or is this a clever way for NTAP to expand its market by combining its standard with that employed by those not using its solution now. The worlds of SAN and NAS will merge. NAS will become one of the storage techniques in a SAN. SAN will become the overriding software that monitors the use and access of the various storage devices in the SAN. This is not really a prediction. It is what is actually happening. This is NTAP's strategy, if you listen to Dan Warmenhoven in the conference calls.