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Technology Stocks : Son of SAN - Storage Networking Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Douglas Nordgren who wrote (3533)	6/30/2001 1:00:06 AM
From: Douglas Nordgren	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4808

Byte and Switch - Big Vendors Offer IP Prognoses [Ed: Intel has always shown a disdain for Fibre Channel because to them it is a low volume chip market and thus never peaked their interest.] Everybody knows that iSCSI (and IP storage in general) is one of the hottest topics in storage networking today. What is still evolving, however, is the picture of how, and to what extent, iSCSI technology will be adopted by the user community -- defined in this case as the IT folks with the big checkbooks. This week Byte and Switch asked some leading storage vendors what they thought would happen -- and got some diametrically opposed opinions. Blaine Kohl, business unit manager within Intel Corp.'s (Nasdaq: INTC - message board ) LAN Access Division paints a bleak picture of Fibre Channel's future. "I think there is a home for Fibre Channel, particularly at the high end. I think Fibre Channel will be a lot like we see with Token Ring. Ten years from now we may see a few percentage points of the SAN market still owned by Fibre Channel." She says Intel will be supporting the iSNS protocol on its Intel PRO/1000 IP Storage Adapter, projected to be available later this year. That protocol provides a naming service for iSCSI devices similar to what DNS does for the Internet (see IP Storage Makes Names for Itself). In contrast, QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC - message board) has its feet in both camps. Mark Edwards, senior vice president at Qlogic, told Byte and Switch that his company is officially protocol agnostic. "We're using a common architecture to support multiple protocols," Edwards said, "and that makes it easy for us to bring new technologies to market quickly." "At the end of the day," he continued, "cost is important, as is functionality. iSCSI has attractive elements in that regard." However, Edwards doesn't see iSCSI at just the low-end of the market, as some people in the industry do. He believes that large customers that want to leverage existing IP infrastructures and knowledge will also adopt iSCSI to a degree. Edwards also told Byte and Switch that the adoption of Fibre Channel had actually gone more slowly than he thought it would. "We're three or four years behind where I thought we'd be at this point. Interoperability is a key issue, and not all Fibre Channel vendors have been as standards-focused as they might have been. I hope that Brocade Communications Systems Inc., for example, understands why they need to do that, or they will give more impetus for the adoption of iSCSI." - Ralph Barker, Editor in Chief, Byte and Switch byteandswitch.com

To: Douglas Nordgren who wrote (3533)	7/7/2001 10:44:02 AM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4808

The future is still unfolding... Shell inks $100 mln IBM deal to build IT centres (UPDATE: adds details, companies' comment, previous TECHNOLOGY-IBM, previous LONDON) SAN FRANCISCO, July 6 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch/Shell Group (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: SHEL.L) has signed a five-year deal worth at least $100 million with International Business Machines Corp.(NYSE:IBM - news) for computer and storage equipment and software to help consolidate the oil giant's technology works, the firms said on Friday. ADVERTISEMENT Shell is building three ``MegaCentre'' information technology hubs in Kuala Lumpur, The Hague and Houston that it will run in-house, aiming to cut costs and standardize equipment and operations. The deal, to support SAP AG software and other electronic business software, is in addition to others by Shell, which is standardizing on Oracle Corp.(NasdaqNM:ORCL - news) database software and plans to announce a telecommunications deal soon, said Alan Matula, Shell's General Manager, IT Projects and Solutions. ``It isn't one partner or one thing,'' he said. In the IBM deal, products like servers and storage would be re-priced every quarter to assure Shell was not locked in at high prices as technology quickly improved, he said. ``They are only going to buy IBM equipment, and in return we are giving them very attractive pricing,'' said Mike Borman, vice president of IBM's server group. The $100 million value of the deal was a minimum figure, he said. Matula said Shell wanted all its regional units to use the same business processes, instead of reinventing the wheel, essentially, for every new project. ``We are not doing this for technology's sake,'' he said. Shell will run the operations, declining to outsource, since it could not find a single services company that could handle all the components of the system, from telecommunications to hardware and software, Matula said. ``That is not to say in two to three years this might not be an outside play,'' he said.