Stevens: Sun is not working with us at all. In the U.S., our biggest partners are HP, Dell, EMC, and a bunch of others. IBM is a vendor of Windows Storage Server but not a big partner. We started with Dell, which has built $1.5 billion in sales with EMC and with us. HP was bent on a Unix, Linux strategy, but after the merger with Compaq, HP created a unified storage division with Windows across the whole line. They have good software for Exchange and SQL Server, the broadest product line of anyone using our software. EMC is a new partner. They needed to have a competitive offering in Windows. They plan to keep investing. We also have NEC in Japan and
Siemens and other partners in Europe.
NEXT: Scoping the Market
Byte and Switch: So is Microsoft chiefly focused on NAS? What's the overall approach to storage networking?
Stevens: In storage, you've got the SAN marketplace and we're working with most of the major players there and the NAS space, and the server space. We want to deepen Windows as a storage platform. To do that we have to connect with SANs. And we want to grow our place in NAS and make sure Windows Server itself is a very good storage platform, a much better citizen in the SAN.
In NAS, there are several segments. Over 25,000 systems is the high end. The main players there are EMC and NetApp, and now Windows-based products from HP and others. Then you have the midrange, from 5,000 to 25,000 systems that's where Windows Storage Server is very strong. Under 5,000 systems, we see as SMB and servers networked for a dedicated environment. Here we see Dell, HP, Sony, Gateway, Iomega, EMC, NetApp...
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