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

To: KJ. Moy who wrote (3623)	7/13/2001 12:42:26 PM
From: Greg Hull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4808

A few days ago Mike Buckley posted a link on the G&K board for the Rule the World newsletters. The first newsletter includes a section on Brocade and McData. us.f1.yahoofs.com If the above link does not work, try the following link and download the first newletter from April 2001. y42.briefcase.yahoo.com Here's the Intro and Conclusion from the report: Brocade: The Weakest Gorilla? Introduction Although it’s not quite a Gorilla in the technical Geoffrey Moore sense of the word, Brocade does currently exhibit many of the attributes prized by The Gorilla Game investor. With a dominant share in a market with strong barriers to entry and high switching costs, it is often near the top of investors’ future Gorilla Candidates list. Brocade makes switches for Fibre Channel based Storage Area Networks (SANs) and, according to market research, currently controls over 90% of its market. Despite its apparently comfortable position at the top of a fast growing market segment, which is expected to grow to around $8 billion by 2004, there are many dangerous clouds forming on the horizon. From an impending clash of the giants within the fibre channel market itself to the emergence of industry wide standards and the eventual long-term disruptive threat posed by IP based storage networks, there is perhaps no other dominant Next Generation Networks vendor that is in a more precarious position than Brocade Communications. <snip> Conclusion The danger posed by McData and Cisco along with threat to the entire industry created by IP based SANs and the Emergence of NAS appliances as an alternative architecture combines to create a rather bleak picture of Brocade’s future. If the world goes completely IP then it is unlikely that the company will be able to maintain its current level of dominance. However, despite the challenges ahead, Brocade is taking steps to prepare itself for this Brave New World. The company is addressing the problem by signing deals with companies like Nortel and ONI. Its most important partnership is with potential competitor, Cisco, which calls for the two companies to develop IP connectivity for the entire network (SAN, MAN and WAN) by incorporating a SAN interface into Cisco routers. Brocade currently has a great deal of muscle in this market as well as great management, research department and a war-chest of intellectual property, so it is highly unlikely that they will be blindsided by a company or technology any time soon. They should remain a major player but their position as a pre-eminent Gorilla candidate will likely not survive the transition.

To: KJ. Moy who wrote (3623)	7/15/2001 7:03:14 PM
From: Gus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4808

....What a small world. I made out quite well with Amati. As I did. The curious thing is that the Nishan CEO seemed to be emulating the Westell PR strategy with SOIP. As you recall, Westell was pushing a competing xDSL technology (CAP) as the de facto standard over Amati's DMT as the de jure standard. Early on, Amati decided on a "speak softly, carry a big stick" PR strategy while Westell decided on a smashmouth PR strategy that made it more popular with traders.