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 : Network Appliance -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: moat who wrote (450)	11/18/1998 5:29:00 PM
From: Fortney Veeble	Respond to of 10934

NetApp was founded by 3 chaps who once had an association with Auspex. I think Auspex failed because they didn't really understand the paradigm shift to an appliance with a single-purpose OS. If they had, there would not have been a Network Appliance. EMC is very strong in the database storage segment and has grown historically by offering a generally superior alternative to the true-Blue solution. NTAP is weak in sales for database storage, but has the potential of coming on strong as Warmenhoven suggested in the last CC. Their appliance concept should be able, eventually, to challenge EMC, even with EMC's very strong base, I suspect. Dave Hitz is a co-founder, not the Founder. He still works at NetApp, I believe, though I have not checked lately. I doubt very much that he sold all his shares, but it is normal for these guys to cash in some of their shares and options - don't take that as a negative. (Have you priced Silicon Valley real estate lately? If you have, you have a clue why it is normal to take some cash out of highly appreciated stock holdings.) This is my take on the situation. But I'm not an insider, and I know less about what is going on than it might appear. Others are encouraged to improve on my answers.

To: moat who wrote (450)	11/18/1998 10:30:00 PM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10934

Let me take a stab at it: > 1) Can you explain why Auspex failed in this space (some reasons/history would be great)? The Auspex solution was very different, architecturally, from the NetApp architecture. Auspex developed proprietary system boards and telecommunications interface cards. I believe they also had proprietary disk controller devices. Their OS is (was) a port of Unix source code to make the I/O management work in a dedicated CPU. NetApp has NO proprietary hardware at all. The motherboard is actually a standard motherboard with unneeded components (multimedia, for example) stripped off. All other componets are third party, off the shelf parts, except for the sheet metal and the sexy "toaster" bezel. Thus Auspex could not keep up with such things as ATM, Gigabit ethernet, fibre channel, etc. Plus, their architecture was much more difficult to install and support. Its reliability, in contrast to NetApp, was dismal. Its perfomormance, while better than standard Unix servers, was much less robust than NetApp. Of course, the other thing that happened is that NetApp knew where all of Auspex's skeletons were and knew its customer base. NetApp knew their box was better and challenged Auspex in their own customer base very deliberately. Auspex customers were already sold on the appliance concept and when they saw how "fast, simple, and reliable" the NTAP box is, they abandoned Auspex. They were faced with major hardware upgrades to their Auspex machines just to be able to upgrade the Auspex OS. So NetApp was cheaper, too. >2) How are EMC's products/customers different than NTAP and ASPX (who is strong/weak where)? EMC is a "channel connect" storage system, rather than a "network attached" storage system. Their nich is mainframes. Interestingly, there are EMC customers running EMC disk arrays attached to NetApp filers attached to the network. >3) What happened to the founder David Hitz of NTAP? What's he doing and did he sell all his shares? Dave is the Chief Development Officer. He is very much involved in the technical direction of the company. No, he still has a very significant stake in the company. He makes major presentations to technical organizations in remains incredibly involved. James Law, a co-founder, is also very much involved in the company, particularly in the NetCache product, I believe.