A chip shop off the block. LSI Logic apparently wants to acquire Emulex; however, Emulex won't accept a stock-only deal and that's about all LSI can offer, according to a source familiar with both companies' plans.

SAS to the host is on Sun's near-term storage roadmap. To date, all systems with serial-attached SCSI (SAS) use it within the enclosure; however, last month, Randy Kerns, the newly minted vice president of strategy, said Sun would shortly announce pure SAS-based systems. We also hear that Sun is developing a version of its 6920 array with SAS and SATA drives, rather than the current Fibre Channel.

Can you say software-only WAFS? Rumor has it that end users who work remotely from a home office or a hotel room may soon be getting a software-only version of Tacit Networks' Wide Area File Services (WAFS) platform to help speed up data transmissions to their main data centers. To date, most WAFS products--Tacit's included--have relied on hardware appliances whose hefty pricetags keep them out of home offices. Without confirming or denying the rumor, Tacit president Chuck Foley says the idea, "makes a lot of sense, and we do things that make sense."

				The Symantec exodus has slowed. Symantec/Veritas Software has apparently fixed its sales compensation plan and salespeople are staying put, says a source close to the company. "As a matter of fact, the people smart enough to stay have been rewarded with a very lucrative plan," the source adds. Which is probably just as well, because selling the Symantec/Veritas "vision" has been about as hard as selling ice to Eskimos.

Money talks, nobody walks away from EMC it seems. One user reports that his company had continual reliability problems with an older Symm that EMC couldn't remedy. EMC's resolution? "They gave us an excellent price on a CX700," he says. "It just seems to be the same story over and over again: 'Gee, we're really sorry, so we'll be glad to make you a really good deal on a new purchase.'" Another user says that when his company got frustrated with EMC's support, EMC's purse strings abruptly loosened. "They have some questionable sales practices," he says. When the company had trouble fixing the installed equipment, EMC's prices for new gear suddenly dropped. He says EMC told him, "Oh, we just had a price break."

File this under "man bites dog." Intel is ramping up its Storage Components Division, which according to a recent recruitment ad on DICE--geared to U.S. software engineers--"is focused on the development of building blocks for the Internet storage industry." Specifically, Intel is looking for American engineers familiar with various storage protocols, such as bus interfaces and real-time operating systems. If hired, they'll be working on RAID firmware for SCSI, serial-attached SCSI or SATA system-on-a-chip (SoC) projects. Here's the man-bites-dog part: The permanent position is located in Bangalore, India's high-tech software development center. Interested? Candidates must have "the legal right to work in India."

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