From: Adam L. Beberg (beberg@mithral.com)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2001 - 03:39:27 PST
On Wed, 17 Jan 2001, Eirikur Hallgrimsson wrote:
> Am I missing something, or is their proprietary storage appliance market
> doomed when standards emerge and Asian manufacturing takes over? They
> are massively overbuilt as a company in terms of expensive manufacturing
> here in the Boston area, unless they can keep margins high.
Do you really want your bank running on discount hardware and software
written by the latest linux kiddies? Yea right. As for standards, they are
already deeply engrained in everything storage companies do, just a few too
many standards to deal with. Yes the proprietary filesystem market will be
toast soon, but _systems_ that actually works will always be a no-brainer
purchase for companies that have profits to protect. Sure they all have 10x
the employees they need, but then you have to hire 9 idiots to get 1 clued
person in every other company too. And those 1's usually dont stick around,
cetainly haven't in the companies/non-profits I've been involved with.
The only reason they can sell hardware that expensive is because the people
that buy this stuff NEED IT TO WORK. You're not paying for the hardware (at
all), you're paying for when there are 2 real problems (takes 2 catastophic
failures to down any real system) someone is driving over with a replacement
to fix it by the time you hang up the phone.
Where you see something that has to work, you will find someone willing to
pay and a company with a P/E to prove it. And when it doesn't have to work,
you hit pricewatch.com and the maker soon hits fuckedcompany.com.
disclaimer: my last couple day jobs are storage related...
- Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/
beberg@mithral.com
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