Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : The New QLogic (ANCR) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nine_USA who wrote (12637)	11/24/1997 10:42:00 AM
From: Nine_USA	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29386

Opposing views re 1998 FC sales from 2 MTIC thread posters ------------------------------------------------------------------ To: +Jay Bahel (771 ) From: +David A. Lethe Monday, Nov 24 1997 2:00AM EST Reply #774 of 775 Jay, at the time MTI's CEO said Fibre Channel, specifically FC-AL, wouldn't be significant in 98, MCI didn't have a product! Now they will, and they showed it at Comdex, (if you knew where to look) >As an aside, I believe (not 100% sure) that fibre channel does not offer clients a migration plan from SCSI - meaning that SCSI drives cannot work with fibre controllers. IMO, clients that have an existing investment in the known world of SCSI (fast/wide SCSI, etc) will not immediately migrate to fibre channel - there has to be that comfort level for clients with the technology - they have to see it work - in their environment before they will fully migrate to it. IMO, clients will beta test fibre channel - and test hard in '98. Once the industry is comfortable with fibre channel, sales will escalate. Not true on a lot of counts... 1) FC-AL at the host end attaching to SCSI JBOD was shown in many booths at COMDEX, some have been shipping in production quantities for a few months now. There are significant advantages for doing this. These include: - saving slots in host - allowing customer to keep investement in SCSI disk drive farm(s) - FC-AL offers faster throughput from subsystem to host then multiple SCSI adapters 2) Agreed not ALL customers will migrate. Just the ones that need better performance and can afford the cost. 3) FC-AL subsystems are already shipping from Hewlett-Packard for their UNIX (HP9000 family). HP is probably one of the most conservative companies around. Note that it is SCSI on the inside, and FC-AL to the host, however. Data General has FC-AL inside/outside and is shipping. Sun is shipping FC-AL today, so are a lot of vendors. Even EMC has a FC-AL host adapter for their symmetrix family. ============ Now let me interject that FC-AL has advantages and disadvantages over SCSI and SSA. No interface is the universal solution for everything. However it is important to realize that FC-AL is big, and will effect the bottom line in both Q1 and Q2. (It will probably hurt Q1 sales of SCSI-based systems) - David ------------------------------------------------------------------ To: +David A. Lethe (774 ) From: +Jay Bahel Monday, Nov 24 1997 10:33AM EST Reply #775 of 775 Appreciate your post. As far as SCSI drives working w/FC - I would have to bet there are technical issues that will arise. Like I say testing for clients will be important prior to migration to FC. <<However it is important to realize that FC-AL is big, and will effect the bottom line in both Q1 and Q2. (It will probably hurt Q1 sales of SCSI-based systems)>> IMO, FC continues to be a small percentage for Q1 and Q2 - we'll see who's right. -Jay