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More Beaver Tales: Page 2 of 9

Dear Sandy,

The two SAN extension startups aren't telling me boo, but such a hookup makes sense. A couple of my sources say they've heard rumblings of this: "LightSand is sniffing pretty hard around SANcastle these days," says one. [Confidential to LightSand CEO Philip Black: You can get brain damage from doing that!]

The pairing is logical because the companies have complementary product offerings: LightSand has focused on storage over Sonet; SANcastle links Fibre Channel over IP, and more recently has developed a "Fibre Channel router" designed to interconnect SAN switches from different vendors (see LightSand Buffs Up Optical SANs and SANcastle Retreats to FC Kingdom). Put 'em together and what have you got? Bibbidy-bobbedy-boo? Well, not only that, but you've got a much stronger story than either of these guys has separately. Note, though, that a combined LightSand/SANcastle would still have to contend with much larger SAN extension equipment vendors, including CNT (Nasdaq: CMNT), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), and Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE/Toronto: NT).

Best o' luck, compadres! Hopefully you'll wind up in better circumstances than the still-stuck-in-limbo IP SAN gateway startup SAN Valley Systems Inc. (see Emulex Jilts SAN Valley).

Dear Bob the Beaver,