But the Cisco insider disputes this: "There is not a snowball's chance in hell of us dropping our high-level features on the MDS platform -- in fact, the opposite is true." [Ed. note: Er... what's the opposite of a snowball's chance in hell?]
Nevertheless, Alex Arnold, an analyst at research firm Fechtor Detwiler & Co. Inc., believes the ongoing friction between Cisco and storage systems vendors will impede Cisco as it makes its debut in the Fibre Channel switch market.
"We've long wondered why the major systems and storage OEMs would 'welcome' Cisco into a large, highly profitable, and closely held market by reselling its new Andiamo switches," Arnold writes in a note issued on Tuesday. "The more we learn from our channel sources, the more we believe that we and everybody else may have overstated [Cisco's] potential impact."
Specifically, EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), which has not yet qualified the MDS 9000, is extremely wary of Cisco, according to Arnold. Citing industry sources, Arnold says the issue of whether to resell the Andiamo switches is "still very much up for debate at EMC." (See EMC Holds Off on Cisco.)
"Internally, EMC views Cisco as its main competitor this decade," he writes. That may be an exaggeration, but it does encapsulate the challenge Cisco faces in realizing its goals for the storage market.
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