The external disk storage systems market growth continued to accelerate through the year.

Data growth was one driver, but the availability of affordable systems that support multiple tiers of storage to address data protection, business continuity requirements, and online, active archives also contributed.

We've seen kind of blase growth since the bottom fell out in 2001; it's nice to see that throughout 2005 we were accelerating.

This is the third consecutive quarter that disk storage systems revenue growth has outpaced that of the server market. However, internal storage growth has exceeded external growth in three of the last four quarters as organizations explore new technologies that increase the flexibility of storage configurations.

The overriding upside to the acquisition for Sun is that they now have additional 'feet on the street' who are extremely well-equipped to sell enterprise storage solutions. Yes, they have focused on tape in the enterprise, but we have no reason to expect that these additional salespeople cannot leverage their expertise on the disk systems side, taking advantage of Sun's broad disk storage systems portfolio.

The external disk storage systems market growth continued to accelerate through the year. Data growth was one driver, but the availability of affordable systems that support multiple tiers of storage to address data protection, business continuity requirements, and online, active archives also contributed.