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.

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

To: DownSouth who wrote (3303)	5/17/2000 11:36:00 AM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

Thanks for the critique The way I look at it is storage systems today is where networking was a decade ago--just really starting to break free as a separate industry which for its entire history has been completely dominated by the processor-centric mindset. Both EMC and NTAP are attacking the new industry from somewhat different angles. EMC is focusing on the enterprise core and NTAP seems more focused on the edge. In this the "rivaly" is perhaps best viewed as analogous to CSCO and COMS in the early 1990s. As far as who is disrupting whom, the key to my mind is to look at the evolving role of storage. NTAP seems comfortable with the current processor-centric world order and is content to be a "better peripheral" to that order. EMC, by contrast, is intent on disrupting the current world order and completely reversing the traditional role between processor and storage. In this new paradigm, storage moves to the center of the enterprise and processors quite literally become peripheral to the storage network. Instead of a central processor surround by a "disk farm" the movement is towards a central storage network surrounded by a "farm" of diskless "server peripherals". In this model EMC is not really competing with NTAP. Rather, they are competing with SUNW, HWP, and IBM for overall IT dominance at the center of the enterprise.

To: DownSouth who wrote (3303)	5/17/2000 1:19:00 PM
From: kas1	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10934

I believe that Dan said a cc or two ago that NTAP has a 75% win rate in EMC competitive situations and, when asked, reaffirmed that in the next cc. Of course, a win rate can be deceiving. NTAP may not even get invited to bid on some of the larger configurations. I would bet that the win rate will drop once they introduce the 6+TB filers, simply because they will get invited to the table a lot more often, on much bigger configurations. As investors, we should concern ourselves not with win rate but with profits -- so this would be a positive development.