NEXT: Is iSCSI Disruptive?
Byte and Switch: You said you see Fibre Channel growing through the end of the decade. Do you even look at iSCSI as being a "disruptive" technology, then, or is that not how you see it now?
Wall: Well, you know, these are great questions. And there are times when a bunch of us sit around the table and you wish you had a crystal ball. But we don't. I think there were some unrealistic expectations set several years ago, where everyone thought iSCSI would be disruptive and unseat Fibre Channel. And that's just not happening. I think the more realistic way of looking at this today is that they're complementary to each other. One of the proof points in that is what Cisco Systems Inc. [Nasdaq: CSCO] has done. At one point, when they first announced [a storage networking strategy] it was exclusively iSCSI; now it's more of a hybrid with Fibre Channel and iSCSI. I think over time things may evolve to where iSCSI will continue to grow perhaps at the expense of Fibre Channel, but this, I can assure you, is not something that's going to happen overnight. Until we get to 10-Gig. You know, 10-Gig is probably a technology point where some of that acceleration of the transition could be enabled.
Byte and Switch: But until then, you think Fibre Channel is very well entrenched.
Wall: In the enterprise, if you're in a Fortune 1000 environment you're surely not going to walk away from your Fibre Channel infrastructure. What you'll do is start to dabble in iSCSI, you might put in a switch that enables Fibre Channel and iSCSI. But in an enterprise, it's going to be a lot slower. Whereas we believe at Intel that actually a new opportunity in the small office/home office environment that really doesn't have a Fibre Channel infrastructure today, and they may just start with a low-cost storage platform based on iSCSI.
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