They became a leading provider of enterprise storage in the mid-1990s but fell behind NetApp in the field.
Fibre Channel was primarily used in the supercomputer field, but has now become the standard connection type for storage area networks (SAN) in enterprise storage.
If so, the mosaic of enterprise storage may finally get a big splash of SSD's new color.
Analysts were struck by the results in the company's enterprise storage and servers group, which sells multimillion-dollar orders of computers and storage devices to large companies.
In computing, enterprise storage is the computer data storage designed for large-scale, high-technology environments of the modern enterprises.
Its accounting system placed storage services (about $1 billion) in a different division from enterprise storage ($4.5 billion).
In enterprise storage the term refers to a larger physical chassis.
So in the long run, although changes are coming, enterprise storage will continue to be a mosaic of different technologies.
Last quarter, the company attributed the shortfall to weakness in its enterprise storage and server division, which sells equipment to corporations and government.
For the fourth quarter, the enterprise storage and server division posted a profit of $107 million, in contrast to a loss of $208 million in the third quarter.