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

To: Mehitabel who wrote (4727)	10/16/2000 8:21:35 AM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

Mehitabel, Thanks for the VRTS info. I hate to see that company divert from its core competency. There is so much more to do in backup technology. They are also affecting their value chain by competing against NTAP. That would greatly concern me as a VRTS holder. NTAP is no longer "a NAS company". They are now an "end-to-end" content management and delivery appliance company. NAS is just a little piece of their technology. DAFS/VI next year will set them head and shoulders above VRTS as huge clusters of filers can be configured to work as a virtual single content management system. VRTS backup systems would fit well in such a scenario.

To: Mehitabel who wrote (4727)	10/16/2000 6:01:01 PM
From: pirate_200	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10934

RE: Veritas > I knew there was competition coming, and haven't been particularly worried. > But I wasn't aware of VRTS plans to compete in this space, so I find the > worm of doubt gnawing a little. Have no idea how NTAP will compete with them, > tho I do know NTAP is already working on their next-generation > NAS, so VRTS might stay behind. The thing to remember is that Veritas has been selling its file system, volume manager/RAID software and graphical-user-interface to Sun Micro, HP, Compaq (Digital) etc. for years and that software, packaged with those companies servers has been sold as an NAS system by those companies, for years. What Veritas is doing now is throwing a small kernel (operating system) underneath their software and an appliance-like interface on top and will sell this to hardware vendors (like above) as an appliance. Essentially, repackaged software. The key point to consider is that Veritas' software, packaged with these hardware vendors hardware has not been competitive with a NTAP solution in price, performance or features for years so why would you expect this software, repackaged, to be any different? This will fail, I think, for two reasons: 1. Veritas supplies software, not a hardware/software package, so their solution is not a total solution for the customer. NTAP, selling the whole package, can be a better innovator in both hardware and software. I think this has been demonstrated to date, with the current software of Veritas with vendors licensing it versus NTAP. 2. Hardware vendors, using Veritas software for a "NAS appliance" will have to compete against their own over-priced data servers currently available. I don't think a company can be successful this way unless they are willing to compete and kill their own product lines in the process. They have a margin issue that makes it difficult for them to be successful. This "canibalization" of your own product lines is covered in Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilema" (already written about here in early notes). Throw these 2 things together with the fact that it has already been demonstrated that Veritas' software has not been competitive to date, makes a repackaging of it a non-issue. That said, the storage space is large and Veritas software is being used by a lot of hardware vendors, so they'll probably have steady growth and revenue though I'd probably put NTAP and EMC above it on the investment ladder. All in my lowly, humble, opinion.