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

To: Technocrat who wrote (17540)	7/31/1998 8:53:00 PM
From: Craig Stevenson	Respond to of 29386

Technocrat, Good to see you back here again. I have always admired your thoughtful posts. I too believe that Ancor's greatest value is in their technology. As I said soon after my visit to Ancor, the MKII is a gorgeous switch inside. I could see how easy it would be to manufacture this switch in high volume. There was A MUCH higher integration level on the MKII, when compared to the previous generation switch. And from everything I've heard (and seen), their ASIC team is first rate. (I saw a picture of their custom ASIC, and it is VERY complex. MUCH more complex than I would have guessed.) As painful as it was, the last quarter's numbers provided a glimpse into the SAN market for switches. At present, it appears as if there isn't much of anything if you exclude Sequent. That is consistent with what management has been telling us for a while now. I wish it were different, and I think eventually it will be, but for now, that's the way it is. I still believe that OEM decisions will be made well in advance of actual shipments. The lack of OEM announcements by Brocade is further evidence of the schedule slippage for FC switching. I was talking to a fellow Ancor investor the other day who brought up a good point. Why are we investing in ANCR? It isn't for the LAN side of revenues anyway. (Not that I wouldn't mind having them.) It is the SAN side where most us think the real money can be made. If Ancor can deliver the right product at the right price, they should be able to succeed in that market. The delay in Fibre Channel adoption may give Ancor additional time to complete the refinement of the MKII to more effectively compete. On the software angle, I read some articles by Brenda Christensen a couple of months ago that talked about this. (I'm not sure if she was still with Brocade at the time, or not.) She was talking about how application software must be written to work on SANs. This differs from the management software which is provided by the switch maker. Anyway, the management software is used to control the switch. Brocade has a demo on their web site, but I haven't seen Ancor's version. I'm also not sure how Brocade's and Ancor's zoning software fits into the equation. Brocade had an advantage with their zoning software, but Ancor seems to have closed that gap with their recently announced software upgrade. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about that aspect to really comment as to which one is better. Craig