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Technology Stocks : Son of SAN - Storage Networking Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Douglas Nordgren who wrote (1139)	3/31/1999 6:30:00 AM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4808

Perhaps GJS can give his perspective on FC, vs. NGIO, FIO. GJS, As a clustering technology can FC hold its own? Will there be NGIO, Fio switches? Is FC ability to do SANs AND clustering, an advantage over NGIO? Can FC and NGIO BOTH be successful? Thanks for any insight you can offer.... FC watchers everywhere wonder about this...

To: Douglas Nordgren who wrote (1139)	3/31/1999 2:07:00 PM
From: Douglas Nordgren	Respond to of 4808

SAN Start-Ups nwfusion.com By Deni Connor Network World, 03/29/99 A big batch of start-ups following the lure of easy money is getting into storage, a market some experts believe will triple in size by 2003. Here are a few of the new players: Convergenet, which is building a device that links an array of storage subsystems and servers over LANs or WANs. SanCastle, which is building a Fibre Channel switch for LAN, WAN and storage connectivity. Siros Technology, founded by a Stanford University professor who is a pioneer in holographic storage. Siros is working on a super high-density 3-D storage system. Astrum Software, which is developing Windows NT storage capacity and performance management software. Convergenet will be rolling out a hardware/software combination, dubbed Gemini, at NetWorld+Interop '99 in Atlanta. Gemini will integrate Fibre Channel and legacy SCSI devices with multiprotocol routing. This integration will allow any type of storage, including Windows NT storage, to be exchanged for Sun or OpenVMS storage in the event of a failure. Gemini will incorporate switches from Brocade Communications and other vendors, and provide the caching of data transferred between local, WAN and Fibre Channel networks. Convergenet has raised more than $30 million and hopes to ship its device in October. The company's product will initially work with Unix servers, with Windows NT server support to follow shortly thereafter."We are building the intelligence that allows a data center to distribute its storage across multiple vendor platforms and keep track of and manage it all," says Jeffrey Drazen of Sierra Ventures, which has an investment in Convergenet. "To do that you need intelligence, software, some storage and lots of networking capability, from Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet to ATM to Fibre Channel." Sierra Ventures says it is willing to invest up to $50 million in the storage market. SanCastle, which saw its second round of financing last week, is also looking at connecting storage in an any-to-any fashion. The firm is making a nonblocking, multiprotocol switch to shunt traffic from one type of network or device to another. SanCastle's Tira 3000 will allow LAN and WAN technologies, such as Gigabit Ethernet and ATM, to communicate with a Fibre Channel device for remote vaulting, disaster recovery or backup. That ability means users on a SONET-based net over ATM could retrieve data from a storage-area network located hundreds of miles away. Siros Technology, a vendor in the high-density storage arena, would not comment on its product. The company, which has received $20 million in venture capital, is working with a 3-D storage technology to develop ultra-high-capacity digital storage. In a traditional disk, data is written to the surface, although some depth exists that could be used for data storage. Siros is taking this depth and optically writing data to it to increase the amount of data a disk can hold. Lambertus Hesselink, founder of Siros, is one of the pioneers in the field of holographic storage, in which up to one terabyte of data can be stored on a crystal the size of a sugar cube. In spite of Hesselink's ties to holographic storage, Siros says it is not working on holography but is focusing on using the 3-D aspects of the disk itself. Finally, Astrum Software is ready to ship a quota and performance management utility for Windows NT that monitors system storage requirements and performance levels across enterprise networks. Astrum's Storcast tool can set storage limits for Windows NT network users and alert managers when that limit is exceeded. Performance problems prompt a similar response.