A comparative analysis of alliances in the enterprise storage market

Alliances have been increasingly used in many industries as a way of obtaining competitive advantage. The enterprise storage marketplace is one in which alliances have been frequently used by many big players. In this paper, a comprehensive list of storage related alliances was compiled. The list covers a five-year period from 1995 to 1999, and the six leading domestic enterprise storage manufacturers including EMC, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Dell, and Compaq. Six forces that have led to the alliances in the enterprise storage space were identified. The alliances were broken down into three levels . based on the strategic importance of an alliance and the amount of effort involved. With the data obtained from press and company news releases, we were able to categorize the alliances with regard to the six forces. However we were not able to determine the level of each alliance due to the Jack of inside information regarding the true goals and processes of the alliances. Nevertheless we believe the evaluation methodology is worth presenting and the work can be completed once the information becomes available. A comparative analysis of the storage-related alliances for each of the six leading storage vendors was conducted. The analysis touched upon the firms' product positioning, competitive advantage/disadvantage, and the use of alliances. The thesis also discusses if and how the alliances were linked to business strategy.

Department dc:contributor.department

Management of Technology Program.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Zhu, Jennifer Xiaoying, 1963-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Edward B. Roberts.

• Management of Technology Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://theses.mit.edu/Dienst/UI/2.0/Describe/0018.mit.theses%2f2000-112
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://theses.mit.edu/Dienst/UI/2.0/Describe/0018.mit.theses%2f2000-112

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9233