In the world of storage, some things remain constant as evidenced this week by Network Appliance's solid third quarter, and Brocade's confusing first quarter.

NetApp's revenue surged 30 per cent to $537m during the third quarter. Net income jumped as well to $76.4m as compared to $60.1m in the same period last year. "NetApp achieved significant growth in revenue and profitability during the quarter, driven in large part by the compelling value proposition of our new FAS3000 midrange product line," said Dan Warmenhoven, CEO of NetApp.

NetApp is looking for a similar performance in its fourth quarter, predicting revenue growth between 28 per cent and 30 per cent.

Over at Brocade, investors witnessed a mixed bag.

On the plus side, Brocade's first quarter revenue increased 5 per cent year-over-year to $170m. On the downside, Brocade's profit fell to $12.6m from $28m in the same period last year.

These results beat Wall Street estimates.

Of course, no Brocade financial statement is complete without an update on the SEC's ongoing investigation into how the company handled stock compensation.

"During the quarter the company began active settlement discussions with the staff of the SEC regarding its restatements related to stock option accounting," Brocade said. "As a result of these discussions, in Q1 06, the company booked a $5.0m provision for an estimated settlement expense." ®

Related stories

• NetApp faces shareholder backdating suit (30 October 2006)
• NetApp raises expectations on Q1 results (17 August 2006)
• NetApp aims at SMBs (27 June 2006)
• NetApp flogs NetCache to Blue Coat (23 June 2006)
• NetApp targets high performance (12 June 2006)
• NetApp guns for EMC and HP (9 May 2006)
• Brocade copies HP and Veritas by buying NuView (7 March 2006)
• Investors bury Brocade on dismal Q3 (4 August 2005)
• IBM's z9 mainframe monster roars to life (26 July 2005)
• Larry Ellison's storage toy goes after EMC and NetApp (14 June 2005)
• EMC Invista provokes technology race (25 May 2005)