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

To: nick chacos who wrote (18571)	2/23/2000 11:42:00 PM
From: Mike Buckley	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

Nick, Sorry for the longwinded post. I've been waiting a while for you all to discuss the Ancor/Brocade story in more than a superficial way so I could throw in my 2 or 3 cents worth. More like a C-note. Thanks! You mentioned that you don't know whether Ancor's mega-port switches are discontinuous relative to Brocade's fewer-port switches. Let's assume for the moment that they are continuous. Even so, is it possible that the nature of the two markets are so different, as I inferred, that they might accomodate two different gorilla games going on at the same time? As an example, Geoff Moore proposed a long time ago that the mid-tier front office space would be a distinctly separate gorilla game from the top-tier game that came first. To all, By the way, my initial impression is that the FC switches are a gorilla game, not a royalty game. You're right that they interface with a non-proprietary standard. But that doesn't make it a royalty game. If it did, anything that interfaced with the TCP/IP protocol would be a royalty game. Instead, I'm suggesting that both Brocade and Ancor have proprietary architectures that make it possible for their switches to be interopable with the non-proprietary standard. I'm either putting a bright light on my ignorance or I might be right about it being a gorilla game. Which is it? --Mike Buckley

To: nick chacos who wrote (18571)	2/23/2000 11:56:00 PM
From: TigerPaw	Respond to of 54805

I still have a difficult time distinguishing between continuous and discontinuous innovations (Not to ignore the point of your post, but I have insite into this one detail) As a software developer by profession I have seen many many cases of incremental development turn into discontinuous innovation. As a program (or process) becomes successfull it gets new features added. These build to a point where the whole program becomes unweildy and must be replaced by a better program. The problem in recognizing this is that there is considerable overlap. A program can be pushed well beyond it's practical limits and all will be well until some problem occurs that is nearly impossible to find. The new algorythm could easily have overtaken except that the users are generally conservative and to not want to replace the working system. It is not until that last little problem, the straw that breaks the camel's back, is encountered that the new system replaces the old. One example is the development of modems, by careful tweaking the thought out maximum of 28000 baud modems was produced a few years ago. Through extrordinary efforts this was pushed to the 56K modems of today, but it was already clear that something else would take it's place (cable or DSL it seems). The lesson, when a technology is straining be aware that a new innovation is on it's way, but the arrival will always be a lot longer than you think. The whole support chain for the innovation has to arrive at the same time. TP

To: nick chacos who wrote (18571)	2/24/2000 10:39:00 PM
From: mauser96	Respond to of 54805

I know next to nothing about FC switches, but I do follow EMC and NTAP closely. A recent Gartner Group report that "It is the mandatory software tier that...raises a configuration to SAN status. ...a key component is SAN management software, which must be present to empower the SAN." This report relegates FC switches to the not so glamorous category of "plumbing". While SAN and FC are usually linked like Siamese twins, a SAN can operate with SCSI switches and other architectures. Furthermore, many consider FC may be rendered redundant in many uses because of developing gigabit Ethernet which would allow the deployment of very fast and cheap NAS. I know that EMC considers software to be the controlling factor in efficient use of SAN, and they are devoting a lot of resources to that. I don't know how that relates to the importance of switches, but given a choice I'll usually bet on software over hardware .