Some interesting articles on what's hot in networking on
this weeks Red Herring. It appears venture capitalists
are getting quite interested in FC.
herring.com
An excerpt from the article appears here:
"Tuning in to Fibre Channel
Mr. Morris of NEA believes the real networking opportunity may lie
inside the enterprise. Up until now, he says, data sent to
businesses has been hitting two bottlenecks: the Small
Computer System Interface (or SCSI) has limited the traffic in
most LANs to a maximum of 45 mbps, and no broadband
technology connects disk arrays to servers. This situation will
only be exacerbated as backbone speeds rise. But according to
Gadzoox Networks, which makes Fibre Channel hubs, the
number of network connections for server storage subsystems
will surpass the number of client connections by the year 1999.
Fibre Channel products alleviate this problem by increasing
bandwidth and the flexibility of connections between servers
and storage devices or between servers and other servers.
Mr. Aronoff says that Fibre Channel "has already been done."
But Chris Schaepe of Weiss, Peck & Greer thinks it's "really
heating up," although it's not as crowded an arena as Gigabit
Ethernet because employees with both networking and storage
skills are scarce. Gadzoox and Brocade Communications
Systems are the two most notable venture-backed companies in
this space. Gadzoox will generate more than $30 million in
revenues over the next year and has raised $21.5 million from
NEA, Onset, private investors, and Seagate Technology.
Mr. Schaepe says that he and his partners have decided to
focus on Fibre Channel switches instead of hubs because they
think that switches will eventually eat into the market for hubs
just as they have in the datacom market. Brocade, which makes
Fibre Channel switches, earned $6 million in the quarter that
ended in October, only the third quarter in which it has been
shipping. Weiss, Peck & Greer recently led a $20 million
mezzanine round for the company. Other investors include
Crosspoint Venture Partners; Mohr, Davidow Ventures;
Norwest Venture Capital; LSI Logic; Andy Bechtolsheim; and
others." |
