|
Slimmer switch vendor field
As expected, Brocade Communications Systems Inc.'s acquisition of rival switch maker McData Corp. gave Brocade the boost it needed to regain the top spot from Cisco Systems Inc. Cisco had closed the gap between the two companies over the past couple of years, but this time Brocade slipped past Cisco with 44% of respondents citing it as their primary switch vendor vs. 40% for Cisco. What's surprising is that Cisco seems to have benefited from the acquisition as well, perhaps because users with both Cisco and McData switches have decided to standardize on Cisco for future purchases.
Boyer isn't concerned about the merger. "We've gone through the Brocade user meetings and heard everything they had to say when the merger went through," he says, "and I don't think it's really going to affect us."
Seasonal shifts
Because Storage conducts its purchasing survey twice a year, we're able to see short-term shifts in buying patterns as well as longer term trends. We'll see if the second 2007 purchasing survey confirms this spring's changes. For now, it looks like spiraling storage capacities might be easing a bit, giving storage managers a chance to evaluate some newer management tools, although continued caution is likely. "We're a manufacturing company so we're not going to get all bleeding-edge anything," says Visher at The Timken Co. "We try to wait for things to settle down a little bit." And Visher is also girding for another round of capacity increases. "Maybe it won't be 100[TB], but I'm sure it will be another 50[TB] at least."
|
ABOUT THE SURVEY: Storage magazine's Storage Purchasing Intentions Survey is conducted twice a year (in the spring and in the fall). Storage subscribers are contacted by email and invited to participate in the survey. For this edition, we had a total of 680 respondents. Respondents are asked if they have purchasing authority in four areas: disk subsystems (643 respondents), storage networking (506), backup and disaster recovery (471), and storage management (407). Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey. |
|
 |
|
