Less than a week after announcing that it would hold off on providing
guidance concerning its ailing quarterly sales, Network Appliance Inc.
Monday announced a series of deals aimed at catering to companies’ storage
needs in the enterprise space.
Chief among the new applications are the network-attached storage firm’s
content delivery network (CDN) solutions, which are especially geared for
enterprise solutions.
The products will help businesses scale back travel and communication costs.
Applications include document dissemination of business analysis and sales
and marketing collateral, which offers enterprises timely delivery of large
files to remote offices, reducing network bottlenecks and costs and
improving employee productivity. Network Appliance has also crafted
streaming media applications for e-learning and corporate communications are
among two of the most popular applications for enterprise CDNs.
These products consist of two enterprise CDN solution packages that include
NetApp storage, NetCache content delivery solutions and ContentDirector and
ContentReporter software. These applications enable complete CDN
functionality including content storage, management, delivery, and
reporting.
The firm also debuted the newest version of NetCache software — NetCache
5.1 — which offers expanded enterprise functionality including increased
bandwidth management and advanced content distribution technologies.
In terms of partnerships, Network Appliance, whose bread and butter is
selling its goods to customers such as Deutsche Telekom and Vignette Corp.,
tabbed RealNetworks Inc. to market streaming applications sculpted on
RealNetworks’ streaming formula. Specifically, NetApp enterprise solutions
manage the network traffic load, allowing administrators to control the
content of the network and ensure that applications have plenty of
bandwidth. By caching and splitting RealNetworks streaming media, NetApp
provides the enterprise end user with a necessary multimedia capabilities.
RealNetworks RealVideo delivers near-DVD quality starting at 500 kbps, and
RealAudio delivers CD quality starting at 32 kbps.
It also tapped Widevine Technologies to create a technology first —
encrypted edge delivery of streaming media.
That company’s chief product — Widevine Cypher — shields copyrighted
content from being stolen, pirated or viewed by unwelcome eyes. Widevine
Cypher, which works in conjunction with NetCache solutions from Network
Appliance to deliver powerful, secure streaming media functionality
enterprise CDNs.
Network Appliances is well known for its near 10-year commitment to the
storage space, where it specializes in network-attached storage (NAS), a
philosophy that is different than approaches by some rivals in the storage
space, such as EMC Corp., a purveyor of storage area networks (SANs). As large as EMC is, it does dabble with some NAS storage as well.
A SAN is a separate
network apart from a company’s LAN
(local area network) that allows servers to talk and work with each other
with what is usually the Fibre Channel
protocol. NAS
, Network Appliance’s specialty, uses a dedicated storage device, typically
a server with a host of RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) storage
capacity, that is attached to the network. Given those two styles, companies
have two choices for their large data storage needs — pick up NAS devices
and to work with the LAN or build a SAN to back up the LAN.
While experts may be hard pressed to prove which method is better than the
other (the argument has spawned enough debate), it is not unthinkable that
the two may one day work together.
It’s no secret NetApp could use the good news given its current condition,
and the frigidity of the IT spending is pervasive throughout the economy.
Dan Warmenhoven, the company’s chief executive officer, said last Wednesday
that the company is not yet ready to forecast results of the next fiscal
quarter.
“The effects of the economy have caused us to revise our outlook. You know,
I don’t think we’re in a position at this point to give any guidance on Q1,”
Warmenhoven said in a conference call, after announcing that sales in the
fourth quarter
would fall 20 to 25 percent from the previous quarter.
The CEO said he would know more fiscal specifics by May 15, when NetApp will
close the quarter.
To be sure, NetApp is not the only one hard hit by a
tough economy. EMC last week said it earned $475 million,
or 18 cents a share for the first quarter of this year, 2 cents less than
analysts polled by First Call/Thomson Financial expected.
