After Cisco's big inventory write off, a slew of other companies play follow the market-leader with price cuts, some even auctioning off gear on eBay.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [May 1, 2001]

There was, of course, the usual flow of new product introductions this week, but other developments took center stage as the SAN server segment continues to heat up.

New goods
Two familiar firms entered the networked storage market this week. Gateway introduced its GS 400 storage system, currently available in three flavors:

• Model 140, with 40 GB of storage, expandable to 160 GB at $999
• Model 260, with 120GB of storage, expandable to 240GB at $1,999
• Model 460, with 240 GB of storage, for $2,799

Openwave, a software company, said it would buddy-up with with data management monolith Network Appliance to create a converged messaging server for enterprise users.

Meanwhile, Network Engines laid off staff and said it would restructure to better control its cash burn rate. The company retains $94 million in cash, down from $113 million at the end of last year.

Going, going . . . Gone!
Cisco said it would write-off $2.5 billion worth of inventory and other equipment, vendors joined together and started slashing prices.

IBM subsidiary Mylex announced the following latest prices:

• AcceleRAID 170LP $399 today
• AcceleRAID 170, $499 today
• AcceleRAID 352 $799 today
• eXtremeRAID 2000 $1,499 today
• eXtremeRAID 3000, $1,999 today

Before March, 2001, the cheapest AcceleRAID was $499. Mylex is promoting the new units with a program for its resellers, allowing them to buy two of each Mylex RAID controller model at discounts of up to 40 percent.

For those of you with deeper pockets, Sun cut the price of its Enterprise 6500 system (with 24 processors and 48 GB of memory) by 11.4 percent from $874,000 to $775,000. Additionally, you'll find there are a few SUN Authorized Auctions on eBay. The most expensive item up for auction is a Sun StorEdge A3500 1635GB starting at $65,000. In 1999, according to this post, the system would have retailed for about $500,000.

For more information about reseller pricing, see the ITParade indices of popular brands and models, updated monthly.

Hard drives IBM announced that NASA had successfully used its one-inch diameter 1 GB Microdrive to store digital snapshots of deep space and bring them on home to Earth, during recent Atlantis and Discovery shuttle missions. The drive costs $499, the shuttles cost billions.

Routers and switches
3ware debuted its iSCSI-ready Escalade7000 product line, which will be available at the end of next month. The Escalade 7810 is reportedly the industry's first short, eight-port board, and is priced at $545. Key features of the product line include 64-bit ASIC technology design and StorSwitch architecture which connects each disk drive to an electrically and mechanically isolated independent "switch port." The company reports that "recent benchmarks demonstrate the Escalade 7800 delivers greater than 180 MB/sec sustained transfer rates."

Promise Technology Inc. introduced its ConnectStor II, small business hard drive—which happens to be driveless. The ConnectStor II lists for $595. The device is being sold as a "build-your-own" storage appliance that allows users to choose their favorite hard drives.

Tape drives
Benchmark Storage Innovations, Inc. announced a "half high" tape drive, the ValuSmart Tape 80, which holds 80 GB. The drive is 5.25 inches high.

StorageTek and Gresham Enterprise Storage announced that Gresham's AdvanTAPE for AIX software will be available for StorageTek's 9840 and T9940 tape drives.

—End