A vendor should not ask a customer to abandon one storage technology for another. At Eau Claire we chose a SAN for a myriad of reasons. One perquisite for this implementation to be successful was a robust high speed network. A fast, reliable and robust network services infrastructure is at the heart of any good implementation. Once you have built the 'pipes' to handle the traffic, your flexibility and adaptability increase manifold.
SANS are much more than switches, and disks and controllers.
They are the heartbeat of any serious enterprise system. Compaq does an outstanding job of delivering on the promise of this emerging technology. One common drive for the entire set of products. Industry standard SAN components and testing guarantee compatibility. A complete tape backup solution, one vendor and one call.