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EMC's DMX a Slow Starter?: Page 2 of 4

Moreover, she says, an unexpected uptick in Symmetrix 5 sales in the fourth quarter of 2002 "may have cannibalized some potential Q1 DMX sales." Goldman Sachs says Symm 5 sales were up 20 percent sequentially in the December quarter, with sales of the product in Europe particularly strong. "This raises questions about the steepness of the early DMX ramp and what level of growth we might expect from high-end storage going forward," Conigliaro writes.

Still, notes Conigliaro, "EMC is now far better positioned to gain market share and have those share gains translate into profits than it was in 2002."

Meanwhile, Ron Lovell, storage practice leader at IT consulting firm Greenwich Technology Partners (GTP), says EMC shops are doing no more than kicking the tires on the DMX while non-EMC shops are not considering it at all. GTP's customers include several large financial firms, as well as Fortune 500 manufacturing and healthcare concerns.

"Our clients who have Symmetrix now are really feeling pressured about having to lay out a significant amount of cash for a DMX solution... They're uncomfortable about the price points," he says. "People are spending tactically because that's all they really can do... It's still a circle-the-wagons mentality."

Another strike against the DMX is that it's the first iteration of a largely rearchitected system, Lovell says. "It's something new, and people are always very concerned about that." EMC, for its part, says it has minimized the pain associated with moving to a new architecture by maintaining software compatibility with the previous generation of Symmetrix.