To: kas1 who wrote (8071 ) 5/10/2001 11:50:44 AM From: Crystal ball Read Replies (1) | Respond to NTAP and the Relationship of Storage Demand to Users: Metcalfe's Law truly states that the Utility = Number of Users Squared. And you are right in that in the analysis of early utility of telephones users or party lines were the equivalent of what we call nodes today. However, the concept is the same. The increase of the ability to communicate with each of the existing BASE of USERS for each incremental new USER is an exponential (geometric prgression) increase. Of course if exact Combinatorial mathematics is applied, we would be calculating and computing the relative differences of how many people each user actually desires to communicate with and who they end up communicating with, and barrier to entry such as long distance toll charges, large metropolitan local free calling and rural sparsely populated POTS (plain old telephone system) CLECs (local telephone exchanges) and the like. I was extrapolating METCALFE's LAW to DEMAND and DATA STORAGE. Obviously each USER or customer whose data is being measured and stored in data warehouses and data bases of merchants, and credit card companies, and online website counters and cookies etcs, is directly proportional to the number of users on average. That is, each USER or customer or website visitor generates an average amount of DATA each time a TRANSACTION occurs, or the site is visited etc. The UTILITY or usefulness of that DATA increases likewise the more it is compared to prior visits, prior purchases, prior credit lines and payments, preferences, shopping carts, and clicked on links, and so on. The merchant or end user who STORES the DATA can with the increased DATA, and demographics and comparison to other USERS, make deals, send directed advertising, and increase solicitation for example of more purchases. The DATA in short becomes more USEFUL, more VALUABLE, and that increased VALUE increasing the DEMAND for that DATA, and the transactions underlying the STORAGE of the DATA, getting back to the customer or USER and so forth is a POSITIVE FEED BACK LOOP, it creates more DATA which is more valuable, and increases the DEMAND FOR STORAGE of more DATA or the NEED for STORAGE, that is, DEMAND = SUPPLY. (Price remaining constant or decreasing with incremental increased demand and supply of DATA STORAGE....made possible of course by the technology behind NTAP and other STORAGE providers). Increase the USERS increases the DATA, and that increases the DEMAND for and SUPPLY of DATA STORAGE accordingly. Therefore, rephrasing METCALFE's LAW: DEMAND STORAGE = STORAGE SUPPLY = DATA SQUARED = USERS SQUARED.
