The growth of the network attached appliance market is so explosive that companies who traditionally haven’t worked in the market space are dipping a toe in the water. The latest entrant is Quantum Corp, which yesterday announced ambitious plans to develop data storage devices for the workgroup market. However, CEO, Dan Warmenhoven, of established rival, Network Appliances Inc claims that Quantum’s plans seem vague – the company has not yet announced any products and doesn’t expect to until next year. Warmenhoven says that he will wait and see the products but claims, I can’t imagine what it is they’re thinking of. A Merrill Lynch report highlights Network Appliances as a market leader on price and performance in the network-attached appliance and nascent web caching market. However, the report also shows that Network Appliances has some work to do in the enterprise sector, where NT and Netware are prevalent and face stiff competition from Microsoft Corp and Novell Corp. Warmenhoven claims that the company is trying to address that problem with NT-based products and OEM deals with Dell Computer Corp and Fujitsu Corp. Warmenhoven says that in the web caching sphere the firm is working to beat out rivals Inktomi Corp. The Merrill Lynch report says that the web caching market was worth $100m in 1998 but expects that to grow to over $1bn over the next couple of years. Warmenhoven claims to see no end in sight for network- attached appliance market, with electronic document and database storage at the enterprise level being the main drivers.
