NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MIKE KARP ON STORAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE 10/14/04 Today's focus: The curious relationship between OEMs and vendors
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Decisions whether to build internally or go the OEM route are strictly business: a company decides to resell another manufacturer's products under its own name because the manufacturer has some intellectual property, manufacturing capability or other competence that enables the company to get products out the door faster, cheaper or better. For example, nobody builds all the components of the storage units they sell; they turn to other manufacturers for the disk drives, connectors and much of the silicon inside. In many cases, OEM-ing means taking a whole machine from a third party, rebranding it, and selling it as your own. Sometimes the OEM adds value in software or additional hardware, or perhaps it simply resells the box as a way to fill out its product line. And sometimes companies compete against one another with machines that come from the same manufacturer. When it comes to storage, which companies sleep together is an interesting m�nage a beaucoup. Here is some of what goes on, at least at the system level. Sun and HP get their high-end systems from Hitachi. Dell gets its best systems from EMC (the Clariion line). StorageTek, IBM and others get many of their storage devices from Engenio (formerly LSI Logic, formerly Symbios Logic, formerly NCR Microelectronics, etc.). Sun gets its 3000 series from Dot Hill. EMC has some of its systems built (and in some cases, designed) by third parties. The list is actually far more extensive than what I show here. If you follow the market, you see some interesting spinoff resulting from this. For example, a number of vendors that sell directly to the public but also supply these larger companies find themselves in the curious position of competing in the marketplace against products they have built themselves. Another curiosity of the OEM world is that some companies produce products that are good enough that even the top-rank storage companies resell them. However, because their name doesn't go on the outside of the box, these companies also remain relative unknowns even though their products may be all over the market (Engenio and FalconStor are good examples of this, although Engenio's penchant for changing its name certainly also contributes to this). When you add to this the fact that many contracts between OEMs and their suppliers don't even permit the original vendor to claim publicly a relationship with the selling company, it is easy to understand what a challenge it can be for them to gain "brand equity"; they often remain very low-profile as far as the general public is concerned. Interestingly, OEM relationships are typically not small companies going to larger companies to get some specific technology they couldn't do themselves, but just the opposite. Most often, the relationship is one of a larger manufacturer turning to some smaller (perhaps niche) player that has come up with key expertise. All of this is quite healthy because it gives large vendors additional ways of acquiring intellectual property without building it in-house, and it gives the smaller companies a better way to distribute their wares. Which is not to advocate sleeping around of course, but in this special case, it seems to have lots of positive effect. RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS Technology Insider: ILM Network World, 10/11/04 http://www.nwfusion.com/techinsider/2004/1011techinsider.html Disk storage wares on tap from StorageTek Network World, 10/11/04 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/101104storagetek.html _______________________________________________________________ To contact: Mike Karp Mike Karp is senior analyst with Enterprise Management Associates, focusing on storage, storage management and the methodology that brings these issues into the marketplace. He has spent more than 20 years in storage, systems management and telecommunications. Mike can be reached via e-mail <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by Veritas Meta Group Whitepaper Database Infrastructure Performance Challenges: Approaches to Better Manage Application Database and Storage Subsystem Performance Corporate relational databases now manage the majority of business-critical data within the enterprise. IT organizations face continuing challenges in managing increasingly complex, data-driven application environments. Read this white paper to discover several factors which will converge to challenge the IT organization's ability to manage its database software infrastructure. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=84728 _______________________________________________________________ ARCHIVE LINKS Archive of the Storage newsletter: http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/stor/index.html Breaking storage news and analysis: http://www.nwfusion.com/topics/storage.html _______________________________________________________________ FEATURED READER RESOURCE CHECK OUT NW FUSION'S WHITE PAPER LIBRARY Visit Today: NW Fusion's White Paper Library with new features and improved capabilities! Sort NW Fusion's library of white papers by Date and Vendor, view white papers by TECHNCIAL CATEGORY, mouse over white paper descriptions and take advantage of our IMPROVED white paper search engine. 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