Gus-- From the NY Times. I'm interest in your comments:
BlueArc to Introduce Faster Data Storage Device
By BARNABY J. FEDER
lueArc a new Silicon Valley company
that promises to provide significantly
better data storage performance, is proving
that the technology sector has not lost its
appetite for speculation about the next great
thing.
BlueArc says it has completed design work
and initial testing with customers of a new
storage device that fetches data 5 to 10 times as fast as similar equipment from
companies like EMC and Network Appliance. BlueArc also says that each of its
specialized servers can handle 100 times as many simultaneous connections as its
potential rivals and manage 200 terabytes of data — 30 times the capacity of any
rival.
BlueArc's official coming-out party is scheduled for today at PC Forum 2001 in
Scottsdale, Ariz. The company is ready to take orders for the devices, which will start
at about $100,000 each. But everything the audience of high technology executives,
investors and reporters will hear has been carefully leaked to influential analysts in
recent months with the kind of results marketers dream of.
Robert C. Gray, who oversees storage systems research at the International Data
Corporation, says that although benchmark tests like those cited by BlueArc do not
translate directly into real- world advantages in every data storage application, they
point to a real breakthrough.
"It's 2 to 10 times as good as today's products," Mr. Gray said.
George Gilder, publisher of a widely followed Silicon Valley technology report,
proclaimed less cautiously in February that the BlueArc "revolution" could take a bite
out of not just the leading storage vendors but also companies like Cisco Systems,
Alteon and Extreme Networks that sell gear to balance loads on storage networks.
The analysts say that BlueArc's achievement is its design of new hardware that
allows data to move in and out of storage systems at roughly the same high speeds it
moves across the optical networks that link computers. Today's market leaders cannot
match that without adding equipment or elaborate software, the analysts say.
BlueArc, which was founded in 1998 as Synaxia Networks in Britain but is now based
in Mountain View, Calif., homed in on a bottleneck that occurs because most of
today's major storage servers use standard Intel microprocessors as their basic
building block. They rely on specialized software to adapt the processors to storage
management tasks. But like a city with roadways too narrow for modern traffic loads,
they jam up as the software is executed.
BlueArc's solution has been to design new chips that are programmed specifically for
the kinds of demands placed on them by storage management.
The basic approach is not novel. Indeed, Cisco and others transformed the
telecommunications business by replacing software- based switching systems with
new hardware specifically tailored to the task.
But established storage companies noted that most start-ups betting on specialized
hardware solutions to technology problems fail, even in the best of times.
"I think they are going to have trouble getting chief information officers to take their
systems, even for a free look," said Mark Santora, senior vice president at Network
Appliance, noting that budgets are under pressure. "People aren't going to experiment
with companies that have no global support and no track record at a time like this."
fred |
