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Technology Stocks : EMC How high can it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (12551)	4/2/2001 11:38:47 AM
From: jhg_in_kc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17183

EMC links customer service centers across the Atlantic When Forbes Magazine asked Forrester Research storage analyst Carl Howe what he thought of EMC's ability to keep customers happy, he had this to say: "EMC has the highest ratings we've ever seen -- in any customer survey, for any company, ever." Now EMC's industry-leading customer service is getting even better. EMC customer service call centers around the globe are in the process of being linked together to create a virtual pool of service representatives. Read more: we0.net

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (12551)	4/3/2001 3:32:22 AM
From: Gus	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17183

Given the dismal IPO climate, my guess is that somebody is going to make a bid for Blue Arc. Who will it be? Nobody if Blue Arc is expecting the same price that Dell paid for pre-revenue Convergenet ($300M) or the same price that Cisco paid for pre-revenue NuSpeed ($450M). Those times are past. I'm still not convinced that their programmable chip-based approach will still be relevant in light of two intersecting industry trends towards server blades and Infiniband. Infiniband is a switch fabric technology that will benefit from the continued deployment of Fibre Channel SANs, another switch fabric technology. Server Insights Issue 1/04 - IDC #G26H - March 2001 A server blade is an inclusive computing system that includes processor, memory, network connections, and associated electronics on a single motherboard. The server blade is also known as a single board computer and typically is associated with an enclosure system that allows multiple blades to be housed in a standard server "sub-rack" or enclosure that share resources such as power supplies and cooling fans. Blades are easily accessible and are typically found in a sub-U form factor and may be associated with content blades and network blades that contain the storage capacity and networking capabilities, respectively. The server blade architecture is designed primarily for computing density along with a universal modular architecture that ensures both flexibility and scalability. The market awaits the Razor product from RLX Technologies, which has secured a further $40 million in second-round investment, bringing the total investment in RLX technologies to $59 million. Notably, one of the second-round investors was IBM, which has 80 years' experience in the IT industry. This continues an expected trend of established IT vendors acquiring revenue from the appliance server market by investment, acquisition, and partnerships with smaller appliance server vendors. Infiniband Server Market Forecast and Analysis, 2001-2004 - IDC #23810 - January 2001 It is clear that increased bandwidth, faster networks, improved wireless technology, the creation of a network of compute bricks, and utility-based computing will bring dramatic change to the worldwide server marketplace. Collectively, the price of computing could fall dramatically while, at the same time, the infrastructure to support it reaches a strained limit. The ability to obtain technology in a commodity fashion could drive established server vendors to compete against unknown suppliers of the future, including some that may not even exist today. In addition, the dynamics of the open-source movement for operating systems and related system software will make the server platform choice irrelevant as server operating systems become indistinguishable. These and other trends will drive the evolution of an information utilities model. However, it will be the driver for very dense computing across a hybrid of topologies (centralized, decentralized, three-dimensional, three-tier architectures), which require the use of clustered systems and multiple server nodes talking via interprocess communications, that will force us to seek a new server infrastructure. Unlike the traditional world of IT, where hardware and operating system choices came first, it will be the workload that will decide what type of server to use, not the underlying application or operating system. IDC believes that the collective limitations of today's server architecture and the I/O interconnects available to them require drastic changes in server infrastructure. InfiniBand's arrival thus appears to coincide with the industry's future server requirements. InfiniBand is a point-to-point, switch-based, serial I/O interconnect architecture built for fault tolerance and scalability. Point-to-point switch fabrics have the advantage that only one device is connected to the end of each link. One key benefit of this approach is that system interrupts are fewer, better managed, and highly scalable. Additionally, each link can drive higher I/O utilization and performance and provide reduced latency with the fabric. Each link is based on a four-wire 2.5Gbps bidirectional connection and can support a variety of transport services. idc.com

To: Bill Fischofer who wrote (12551)	4/10/2001 2:15:31 PM
From: jhg_in_kc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17183

Bill, What do you think of this stock vis a vis EMC? (BRCD...I just bought some..) Monday April 9 5:15 PM ET Brocade Announces High-End Computer Storage Switch SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (NasdaqNM:BRCD - news) on Monday unveiled a high-end data switch for storage networks, pitting the company against a smaller rival and potential upstarts in the market for next-generation networking speed. Storage networks are one of the fastest-growing classes of corporate technology spending and switches are the links that tie the systems together, so that a disk drive can talk to a tape backup system, for instance. Brocade, which controls over 90 percent of the market for mid-range switches, said it would launch the new product, a high-end switch that can connect more devices and so sits at the center of a network, in the fourth quarter of this year. ``Partner qualification will start in the summer, and we think it will wrap up by calendar Q4,'' said Jay Kidd, vice-president of product marketing, in a Webcast. Chief Executive Greg Reyes said it was unclear what systems makers would buy the new switch, but Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE:CPQ - news), for one, had indicated interest. The new SilkWorm 12000 switch will run at up to 2 gigabits per second, twice the speed of Brocade's current products, and will not be limited to the Fibre Channel protocol, unlike other Brocade offerings, the company said. That high-end range is dominated by McData Corp. (NasdaqNM:MCDT - news) and its Director-class switches. The early product announcement, up to nine months before the shipping, reflected the pressure on Brocade to expand its product line into the higher end of the market and to support a number of different communication protocols, said analyst Steve Duplessie of research firm Enterprise Storage Group. ``It's huge,'' Duplessie said. ``They (have been) getting murdered in the press and in public perception by being Fibre Channel bigots and not having a Director. Traditionally a company wouldn't be announcing nine months early, because a heck of a lot of things can go wrong.'' The Director class was 85 percent controlled by McData, which had just under $250 million in sales last year, but a number of venture capitalists were funding new ventures targeting that market niche, he said. ``Brocade just took the wind out of a lot of people's sails,'' he said. Brocade sales were $165 million in the latest quarter, ending Jan. 27, and had been $329 million for the previous fiscal year. Brocade shares now 25. The stock has lost 77 percent since the start of the year.