But Mike Smith, Emulex's executive VP of marketing, insists that Emulex has
a total cost of ownership advantage over competitors. "The benefit derives primarily from two
features," he says. "Emulex adapters allow for firmware upgrades, and we use a
single driver for all of our adapters."
According to Smith, these features simplify the ongoing use of Emulex HBAs, something he says survey respondents value more than "speeds and feeds" these days.
Clearly, Emulex has enlisted research to buttress its own marketing strategy. And that speaks to several key points about this segment. First, it's growing fast enough to motivate leaders such as Emulex to try and solidify their piece of the action.
And the action is sizeable: According to Gartner/Dataquest, estimated worldwide sales of Fibre Channel host bus adapters will grow to $847 million in 2002 from
around $600 million this year (see Fibre Channel HBAs Going Strong).
Emulex's news is also an indirect bid for the confidence of its OEMs, including Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE: CPQ), EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HWP), Hitachi Ltd. (NYSE: HIT; Paris: PHA), and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM). These vendors account for roughly 80 percent of Emulex's worldwide annual sales.
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