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

To: jim g. who wrote (17539)	7/31/1998 6:39:00 PM
From: Technocrat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29386

I do not think Ancor has a software problem per se. The crown jewels are in the ASIC design of the hardware switch. High integration translates to a low chip counts which should favor low manufacturing costs once production ramps up. Craig and others praised this aspect of Ancor's product. They should be good given their experience base. Of course, there is firmware and some ancillary software to manipulate the switch to run under different mode settings. I am sure Ancor has this well in hand. Where software becomes important is implementing the Storage Area Network (SAN). The most sophisticated arrangements would have file systems which take maximum advantage of the FC fabric or arrangement of storage. This would be the most robust and user-friendly approach. Not sure many vendors are very far along (perhaps IBM, EMC, SGI, Sun, with Microsoft nibbling along the edges). The middle ground would be to write application-specific software which writes to the disk farms in a well behaved way. Examples might be a large database application, network caching, or a fancy backup strategy. This is where the marketing folks should have been focusing on. Fast FC switches are a key ingredient of SAN, but the big picture is complex. Undoubtedly, this is why SAN adoption is moving slowly. It is definitely coming but the wait has been frustrating.