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

To: DownSouth who wrote (37094)	12/29/2000 9:21:25 PM
From: GuinnessGuy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 54805

DownSouth, "So you can mix BRCD FC switches with other brands, or you can roll out the BRCD switches and roll in a competitor's? Serious question." Yes, that's my understanding, although the software to implement the routing protocol has only recently been completed. At least QLGC said it would be completed by now. You'd have to call them to confirm this. A few months ago they were still working on 'edge' cases. I took that to mean the more exotic switch configurations. BTW - I have RTFM at least twice. It was a while ago though. I might add that I don't buy everything that the book expounds upon, but all in all it was a very worthwhile read. Craig

To: DownSouth who wrote (37094)	12/29/2000 10:07:17 PM
From: GuinnessGuy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

DownSouth, "They do, but what lead to market dominance was not the question. The statement that you made was that the company with the dominant marketshare had the pricing power. It could be that dominant marketshare was achieved through low pricing. (Commodity market.)" True, but I thought we were limiting our discussion here to early stage technologies such as SAN's. I don't believe I've ever read any posts in this thread concerning companies that are involved in marketing products that are on mainstreet where commodity pricing is prevalent. "I really do think you need to RTFM, Craig. You have failed to explain to me how a low market share is an advantage. If 10% is better than 90%, then 1% should be great, using your logic." As I said before, there are many factors that go into an analysis. One percent may be fine but only under very special circumstances. One thing that really needs to be watched is the change in market share. If a company goes from 3% to 10% in one year then that is clearly better than if a company went from 20% to 10%. They may both have 10% but it's obvious which company is the most interesting to an investor who is considering a purchase. And I would agree that 90% market share is preferable in a Gorilla game. It's not necessarily true where switching costs are low(non-gorilla game), which is now(or soon will be) the case with FC switches. For now, I'm placing more emphasis on the company that seems to be ahead in switch ASIC scalability in terms of both port count and bit speed. Clearly, BRCD seems vunerable here, due at least in part to their ASIC's memory configuration(shared vs distributed). Craig