Some NTAP Competitors and Alliances?
I took a look at the silver level sponsors at the orlando conference, and prepared short descriptions of several. There's a rich business in integrating EMC's products and several companies specialize in management of storage. These companies are heavily weighted toward SAN.
ZeroWait (www.zerowait.com) private, 300% revenue growth rate, no hard #. Specialty is load balancing and optimization, using Arrowpoint's product and NTAP's Netcache. Also constructs firewalls for VPN. Customers include Wingspan Bank, MP3, DuPont, USIX. Partners include CSCO, NTAP, Arrowpoint, SpectraLogic, SyncSort.
Storageway (www.storageway.com) private, no revenue claim. Specialty is managed storage utility and backup, offered thru hosting companies as a tool for managing outsourced storage. Partners include Exodus, Level3, EMC, BRCD, Hitachi, ADIC, CSCO, VRTS. Has drawn $48 mn in venture, $36 mn in last 3 months. Worldview, Newton, Matrix are lead sponsors.
3Ware (www.3ware.com) private, no revenue claim. DiskSwitch RAID controller product avoids data loss due to drive failure. Also has an intriguing product which allows remote (via HTML) storage reconfiguration by owner. Ethernet based, several deals with Maxtor, integrating the switch with Maxtor's Hard drives. Emphasized Linux capability in their hiring needs. On their fourth round, received $43mn, investors include VRTS, FranklTempl, VantagePoint.
TrueSan (www.truesan.com) private, shoestring operation. Paladin modular fibre channel storage foundation. Unlike the massive bus operations used by established players, TS uses distributed and parallel designs. In theory, this allows rapid scalability. MetaFabric offers 128Gb/sec of bandwidth and up to 50 TeraB of storage support. The "drag and drop" online configuration allows rapid repositioning of storage and components. Pricing starts at $88,000 (they claim competitors start at $150k), the product is targeted toward the midsize user. Hiring Linux, NT Win Fibre Channel experts. Management is largely xORCL and Hitachi. Investors are private, one round in Jan 2000 for $1mn. I'd expect EMC will take them out when they have a finished product.
Vixel (www.vixel.com) NSDQ:VIXL, FibreChannel interconnect products, especially hubs. Partners include Sun, LSI, EMC, Siemens, VRTS, Amdahl, NTAP and StorageTech. Revenues are down, largely due to a refocus of the business and a change in revenue recognition. Their new product is a clustered hub for small to medium businesses running NT/Win2000. LSI will deliver that.
PRISA (www.prisa.com) private, network management software, FC host bus adapters. Hiring SCSI and FC experience. First round: GE Equity, CPQ, Intel in for $11.8 mn. CPQ will resell Prisa as a management tool for multi-vendor devices. This is one of several companies which specialize in assuring interoperability of multi-vendor systems.
Polaris (www.polarissns.com) private. Claims 300% revenue growth. Provides interoperability certification for EMLX, JNI, QLogic systems interfacing EMC or Stor environments. Offers EMC Qualified Interlink Channel.
Legato (www.legato.com) LGTO '98rev=161mn, '99rev=225 '00 rev=173ytd with a new method. Remote business takeover, backup, server failure recovery. partners with Amdahl, Banyan, Bull, Fujitsu, HP, ORCL, SGI, Sun. For Sun, they created the Solistice device for backup.
Interphase (www.interphase.com) INPH. Makes FC host bus adapters. HP, IBM, CPQ, MOT, SUNW, NOK are customers. Top product is a Full duplex 2GPBs FC for a 400mb thru put. They also have a line of slot optimization products (for slot challenged rack systems) and several telecomm products. Frame relay enhancement, ATM, major hiring areas. MOT was 12% owner, now selling back. Exited VOIP business. Will exit ethernet support business. HP is 50% of customer base, 2 others are 10% owners.
Will take a look at some of the lesser known 2nd tier players next.
GSR |
