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Strategies & Market Trends : The Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jj_ who wrote (30819)	1/30/2001 2:36:43 PM
From: jj_	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 49816

Message 14360366 Comparison of McDATA and Brocade patent position: ..............Patents.........Patent applications Ancor...........1............. ..3 Brocade.........2................8 McDATA..........16...............20 Notes: Ancor - as of 3/30/2000. Ancor now part of Q-Logic. Ancor patent expires early 2007. Brocade - As of 1/31/2000. 2 design patents, 5 pending utility patent applications, 3 pending provisional patents McDATA - As of 6/30/2000. Cross-licensing agreement with EMC and IBM, independently (ESCON/FICON) and as part of EMC. Factoid: One of the inventors of McDATA Patent No. 5,748,612 is Kumar Malavalli, one of the co-founders of Brocade. Here's a chronology of Brocade and McDATA business relationship: Message 14195312 Comparison of McDATA and Brocade new product cycles: McDATA Brocade Q32000 9-port switch* None Q42000 16/32-port switch None Q12000 64-port director 3rd Generation** The 9-port ES-1000 is due to ship this quarter. It is fabric-ready and is using McDATA’s new ASICs. It will be McDATA’s first direct competitor to Brocade’s and Ancor’s main line products. [Source: ML report] 2.0.6 BETA PHASE The Beta Phase starts upon delivery by McDATA of the Beta version of McDATA's Product and ends with the final acceptance of McDATA's Product by EMC. The Beta Phase will be performed under responsibility of EMC. EMC will provide technical support for EMC software and hardware. McDATA will provide technical support for Product. Message 14336148 1st half of 2001, BRCD third-generation product line will come out (w/in 6-8 months). These will be major hardware innovations, with 2-gig switches, higher port counts and increased switch intelligence*. This will help provide continued high growth into latter part of next year. Message 14322705 More excerpts from ML report: Although still in its early stages of development, the SAN market is expected to grow rapidly. According to Gartner Group, more than 70% of shared storage in network environments should be reorganized into SANs by the year 2002. IDC has estimated that worldwide SAN storage systems revenues will grow from less than $3.8 billion in 1999 to over $11.5 billion in 2002, representing annual growth of 45%. Table 4. Worldwide Fibre Channel Hub and Switch Factory Revenue 1997 1998 1999 REV SHARE REV SHARE REV SHARE 1 Brocade $11.5 43.5% $25.7 35.7% $91.8 38.8% 2 McDATA - - 5.4 7.5 52.2 22.1 3 Gadzoox 5.8 21.9 21.3 29.5 40.0 16.9 4 Vixel 3.3 12.4 13.3 18.4 23.0 9.8 5 ANCOR 4.0 15.0 3.0 4.2 12.8 5.4 6 STK - - 2.2 3.0 12.8 5.4 7 Emulex 1.9 7.2 1.2 1.6 3.8 1.6 Total $26.5 100% $72.1 100% $236.4 100% Source: IDC Fibre Channel Switch Market Forecast IDC made projections in April as shown in Table 5. We believe these projections are low. With the amount of SAN storage that EMC, IBM, Compaq, and Sun are shipping today, all projections surrounding storage have proven too conservative for the past year. Table 5. Worldwide Fibre Channel Switch Revenue Forecast 5-year 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 CAGR Switches(loop) $ 14.1 67.1 108.2 148.4 180.1 89.0% Switches(fabric) 100.7 186.8 387.0 693.3 1020.7 78.4% Switches(director) 52.4 197.2 441.6 867.9 1429 128.5% Total $ 167.2 451.1 936.8 1710 2630 99.1% Growth 366% 170% 108% 82% 54% From my old notes: 1999 External Disk Storage Market Market Share Revenues EMC 22.7% $ 4.042B Compaq 14.3% 2.549B IBM 10.5% 1.878B Sun 8.2% 1.457B HWP 6.6% 1.178B Others 37.7% 6.708B Total 100.0% $ 17.812B