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To: saukriver who wrote (42242)	4/29/2001 12:51:34 PM
From: Bruce Brown	Respond to of 54805

If tech has a sure bet, data storage is it. moneycentral.msn.com Article focuses on EMC, BRCD, and VRTS. Good article, Saukriver. We could debate Michael's choice of title as either going against the grain of the topics we discuss here in terms of anything in technology being a 'sure bet' or not. Yes, certain solutions within storage will indeed prove to be excellent bets over the coming years as the growth of data oozes forward. He mentions the quality companies of EMC, Brocade, Veritas, Finisar, Emulex, QLogic, McData, JNI, Cisco, IBM, Compaq and Sun in his article and does a pretty good job of organizing them for the reader. He also does a nice job of addressing - or at least introducing - the issue of thoughts on when the sector will trough and when the market will consider kicking into the discounting mechanism of anticipating improving fundamentals. EMC's CC began addressing that they were starting to see a little more clarity and a little demand pick up. What did that result in? Investors with a longer term view contemplated adding some shares. In the shorter term or intermediate term, other investors might wait to actually see improving fundamentals before setting capital to work. Different strokes for different folks. At the same time frame, Brocade warned (April 20th) of Q2, but SSB and BofA both came out with upgrades on Brocade along the lines of thinking in terms of longer term industry fundamentals. EMC, Emulex, Brocade and Network Appliance were mentioned in this article: dailynews.yahoo.com In the realm of things, it is quite true that data storage and transfer industry remains a very compelling avenue of playing technology. I know many of us are invested in either one or more of Brocade, EMC, McData, Sun, Network Appliance, Veritas, etc... . It remains a quality group to follow as an industry to see how both the fundamentals and the technicals are tracking. The market will most likely begin discounting the improving fundamentals before they show up in the numbers. No need to mention the lows these stocks have seen in the past month or two. BB

To: saukriver who wrote (42242)	4/29/2001 1:19:35 PM
From: BDR	Respond to of 54805

<<data storage is it.>> And storage and transmission of data will only grow. The need was driven home for me from a personal experience this past week. Since it is the weekend, I hope I might stray a bit off topic. Last week I was inserviced on the Kodak PACS digital radiology system that our hospital system (two hospitals including a Level I Trauma Center) has recently installed. I had been aware that digital imaging was coming but had no idea of the extent. CT scans have always consisted first of a digital representation of the image information (the Computed in Computed Tomography) that is printed out later on film. It is the intent of our radiology department to eventually bypass silver halide technology altogether and go to direct digital capture and storage of the image information for later viewing electronically for all studies. kodak.com The old fashioned lightboxes have been removed from most of the stations in the reading room, replaced with banks of four large, high resolution, "portrait" or vertically oriented monitors. At the present time the images can also be viewed on the monitors (standard flat screens like many of us have at home) at the nursing stations throughout the hospital by way of the hospital intranet. The next step will be to open the system up to allow physicians at home to log on and view images using their usual browser. kodak.com That means I will be able in the middle of the night to review on my desktop computer almost the same image that the ER doctor, trauma surgeon, or radiologist is looking at in the hospital. Talk about enhancing communication and improving diagnosis (not to mention improving my quality of life). Furthermore, all studies, whether done in the two inpatient facilities or several outpatient radiology centers, will be accessible. When you consider that a single "slice" of a CT digital image contains more data than a similar sized family photo (orders of magnitude more, if I am not mistaken) and that there may be dozens of slices in a single study, the storage and transmission requirements are staggering. I don't know the details of the system but this one page does mention that SAN technology is used: kodak.com KODAK ARCHIVEMANAGER Digital Archive The ArchiveManager digital archive and automated workflow management system is a cost-effective, scalable solution for hospital enterprises and imaging centers of all sizes. Patient study information and images are compiled and stored in "virtual patient folders." The system supports storage area network (SAN) technology, which can deliver large studies four to six times faster than existing networks. It also contains new software that improves routing and prefetching using detailed information gathered from hospital and radiology information systems. Secure storage is, of course, an issue. If one believes that hard copies are safer and more accessible than computer files, they have never stood at the file room window, aging visibly, while the clerks hunt for a folder. Secure storage and rapid transmission of data will be a necessity in the future in more and more situations.