Normally, when a vendor is the undisputed king of a market, there’s a risk of the company taking their eye off the ball and letting markets slip away. BlackBerry in the smartphone market, 3Com with NIC cards and switches, and Nortel with almost everything they made are some examples of this. However, every once in a while vendors do surprise by trying to change the very market they dominate. Sure, it has risk, but generally markets need to be shaken up once in a while to make sure they don’t stagnate.

On March 25, Brocade, the clear market leader with north of 70% share in storage networks, announced its “Fabric Vision” strategy to make the generational upgrades to Fibre Channel technology about more than just raw speeds. Currently, whenever someone refers to a SAN switch, it’s referred to as “Brocade’s 16GB Switch” or “Cisco’s 8GB Switch,” which in some ways indicates the switches’ only differentiated value is speed. Juxtapose this with the wireless industry, where the generational leaps are referred to as “3G” and “4G.” Sure, buyers know that 4G is faster than 3G, but there are also other benefits that come along with it.

In a somewhat surprising move last week, the provocative domain name registrar GoDaddy.com has decided to drop the .com from its logo and become just “GoDaddy.”

I must say, I’ve become a big fan of GoDaddy over the years – maybe because of the Danica Patrick association – but I’m really not a fan of this move. It seems excessive. As part of this news, CEO Blake Irving was quoted as saying “10 years from now, we will look back at a world where every domain name ending in a .com like our kids look at record players.” I think this is a misguided statement. Record players were replaced by new technology.

Think back to the mid 80s. Michael J. Fox starring in the hit movie “Back to the Future.” His 1981 DeLorean, powered by the flux capacitor invented by the esteemed Dr. Emmett Brown, was sent back in time to Hill Valley on the date of November 5, 1955. What was going on in 1955? Well, we know George McFly was still in school. We also know that Goldie Wilson was thinking of running for Mayor of Hill Valley. And we know that no one telecommuted back then, and working from the office was the norm.

I can only imagine that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer must have slipped in her bathroom, bumped her head on the toilet like Doc Brown and had a vision of a flux capacitor that could send people back in time on her pre-weekend memo that gave employees a “come into the office or quit” ultimatum. I imagine that Marissa actually went back in time and is preparing for the “Enchantment Under the Sea Dance,” which is distracting her from her role of being the boss of Yahoo.

Remember this blog post?

It’s my now infamous “Bell tolls for thee” blog that I authored just after VMworld last year. This was the blog for which I was so soundly flogged by the VMware community in the comments section, and even received a few nasty emails. (By the way, I do want to thank all of the people who comment on my blogs. Whether you agree or disagree with me, it’s always good to have the feedback. 

- BACKGROUND: VMware, the bell tolls for thee, and Microsoft is ringing it

Well, it appears the bell has indeed rung for VMware. Late last month, VMware held its most recent quarterly call to go over financial numbers, and all appeared well. After announcing a record December quarter and great earnings, VMware management lowered the boom. The outlook for the current quarter and the current year were both substantially lower than consensus estimates, marking several consecutive years of slowing revenue growth. 

If you’re an NFL fan, this weekend featured a rematch of an earlier game where the Patriots crushed the almighty Houston Texans. The result was much the same, with the Pats having their way with the inferior team from Texas. The Texans looked good on paper, but in the end, the better team won.

Similarly, last week, a San Jose-based federal judge confirmed a $60-million award in Brocade’s favor, which had been delivered on August 6, 2012. The judge also issued a permanent injunction barring the defendant, A10 Networks, from infringing on Brocade’s Global Server Load Balancing and High Availability patents. This means A10 is now forbidden from making, using, selling or offering to sell any of the products that use those patents in the U.S.