To: Spartex who wrote (16596 ) 1/27/2000 12:07:00 AM From: Mathemagician Read Replies (2) | Respond to
NTAP followers should also read this article.In a head to head battle, the simple NAS appliance should easily beat complex SANs over the long term as the superior storage standard. There will not be a need for specialized storage networks if the general network can easily support key storage applications such as the backing up of data. Are SANs doomed over the long term then? Not necessarily. Network Appliance and Brocade are spearheading the idea of a NAS-SAN combination to create a single, optimal storage standard. John William Toigo, in his book The Holy Grail of Data Storage Management, says "Such an integration would be a step toward improving the scalability of NAS storage, while setting the stage for enterprise-wide storage infrastructure management via a back end Storage Area Network." Simply put, SANs will likely survive in some form over the long term. With that being said, investors do not have to limit themselves to NAS, with just Network Appliance as the market leader, while there are several leaders in SAN that should continue to grow at amazing paces in the short term. Pure SAN stocks like Brocade, Crossroads, and JNI have grown annual revenues in the 100 to 400 percent range. To sum everything up, NAS should emerge from a battle with SAN as winner, but SAN stocks still possess long term potential due to a possible NAS-SAN combination.
