Idea Portal: SAN/NAS

April 12, 2006

SAN/NAS

To me it didn't seem like a full year, but I attended the SAN/NAS summit again, after one year.

May be the first thing to notice is that, the technology in this sector has not been shaken during the past year at least not on the commercial scale! Rather there are two major changes, firstly as promised and expected, the amount of money and request pointed towards storage solutions is rising exponentially. Second, there are better business models in effect, better user interfaces and better management. So overall it looks like people are reluctant that the technology surpasses the requirement, and it is now a matter of who can be more artistic in taking a bigger share of that money, which sounds OK, at this time.

On the Apple side things were a little different though. Even after one year, Apple prices are by miles lower than anyone else in the market (although they are still not claiming for the mission critical usage). However what I saw at Apple was a zero derivative. They were there with exact same products as one year ago, The guy had not even bothered making new slides for his presentation, which was a complete mess, as he forgot what he wanted to say many times, and his live experience with building a raid on two USB flash memories on his laptop ended up in saying: "I'm sure it will work! Lets continue with the presentation!!!".

I guess Apple has been so busy on the iPod and intel transition and other fronts that they have not really been able to touch the server side. Furthermore as I thought, and the Apple guys also acknowledged, their sales has dropped noticeably, mainly because people are not buying XServe with a G5 in it! rather they want to see the product updated with the new line of Intel processors, which unfortunately unlike the G5 is still not available in 64 bit version.

What I see at the moment is that they are just surviving somehow, so that they will have something to say when they settled the other fronts! By that time they could either be out of market or unstoppable.

Posted by Shauheen at April 12, 2006 04:45 PM


		April 12, 2006 SAN/NAS To me it didn't seem like a full year, but I attended the SAN/NAS summit again, after one year. May be the first thing to notice is that, the technology in this sector has not been shaken during the past year at least not on the commercial scale! Rather there are two major changes, firstly as promised and expected, the amount of money and request pointed towards storage solutions is rising exponentially. Second, there are better business models in effect, better user interfaces and better management. So overall it looks like people are reluctant that the technology surpasses the requirement, and it is now a matter of who can be more artistic in taking a bigger share of that money, which sounds OK, at this time. On the Apple side things were a little different though. Even after one year, Apple prices are by miles lower than anyone else in the market (although they are still not claiming for the mission critical usage). However what I saw at Apple was a zero derivative. They were there with exact same products as one year ago, The guy had not even bothered making new slides for his presentation, which was a complete mess, as he forgot what he wanted to say many times, and his live experience with building a raid on two USB flash memories on his laptop ended up in saying: "I'm sure it will work! Lets continue with the presentation!!!". I guess Apple has been so busy on the iPod and intel transition and other fronts that they have not really been able to touch the server side. Furthermore as I thought, and the Apple guys also acknowledged, their sales has dropped noticeably, mainly because people are not buying XServe with a G5 in it! rather they want to see the product updated with the new line of Intel processors, which unfortunately unlike the G5 is still not available in 64 bit version. What I see at the moment is that they are just surviving somehow, so that they will have something to say when they settled the other fronts! By that time they could either be out of market or unstoppable. Posted by Shauheen at April 12, 2006 04:45 PM