Byte and Switch: What are the trends that make this possible? Is it basically the dropping cost of IDE drives?
Brown: That's one of them. Another thing is pretty clever packaging. The unit has drives stacked three deep, and it's unbelievable density. It's 3 terabytes in 2U-high box. Nobody else can do this kind of density, because they're doing disk arrays for primary storage. We're the only ones that started with the concept of, let's do a disk array for backup. Ironically, it took a tape company to think about disks packaged for backup. Other disk companies are saying, "Oh yeah, we can do disk-based backup, but please use our standard array and change your procedures."
Byte and Switch: You're talking about Network Appliance Inc.'s [Nasdaq: NTAP] NearStore? [See NetApp's Backup Plan.]
Brown: NetApp is one. They're really saying, "You have to think of a different way to back up. Don't necessarily think you're going to use Veritas Software Corp. [Nasdaq: VRTS] or Legato Systems Inc. [Nasdaq: LGTO]." We're saying you can use those backup packages. The key to this is that we've used our own software to make it look like a tape library. So Veritas doesn't know it's not talking to a tape library.
Byte and Switch: How is the DX30 better than the NetApp product?
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