But McData still has a very long way to go before it matches the storage software clout of market leaders like EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) or Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS).
McData doesn't break out software revenues -- it reports those sales together with services -- but any way you slice it, SANavigator is relatively puny. For the fourth quarter of 2002, McData had $9.3 million for sales and services combined. EMC's software revenues, by comparison, were $347 million for the same period (see McData, Emulex Rake It In and EMC's Q4 Stars Clariion).
And McData's SANavigator unit faces a growing number of competitors, including Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) (NYSE: CA), which just released its first product in this category, BrightStor SAN Manager. Other vendors angling for a piece of this pie include Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), Fujitsu Software Technology Corp. (Softek), AppIQ Corp., CreekPath Systems Inc., and InterSAN Inc. (see CA Spans Into SANs).
Another challenge is that as a hardware-focused company, McData may have a tougher time selling SANavigator beyond its base of Fibre Channel switch customers. For example, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. considered purchasing Veritas's SANPoint Control software but selected SANavigator primarily because it had already decided to deploy McData's switches. "It's the only software we've used for SAN management, so we don't have a lot of comparison to other tools," says Mark Swaim, technical services manager at the tobacco company (see Tobacco Firm Puts in Smokin' SAN).
Indeed, one of the major new features in SANavigator 3.5 -- which the company launched today -- works only with McData's own switches. The software is now able to take advantage of the template registers in McData's switches, which are essentially counters that sit on each port, allowing SANavigator to act as a software-based protocol analyzer. (The template registers are also at the center of the patent-infringement lawsuit McData filed against Brocade, which is still pending -- see McData Seeks Arbitration , Brocade 1, McData 0, and McData v. Brocade: The Highlights).
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