Three years ago a storage universe was awash with array startups. Some were bought, some crashed
and burned, yet 3 immature storage array vendors infantryman on: Nexsan,
Pillar
Data and Xiotech.
These 3 haven’t gifted large growth. Nor are they in a right marketplace niche to have
been scooped adult when vital suppliers faced a product gap, as was a box in a iSCSI SAN space
with EqualLogic
going to Dell and LeftHand Networks to HP.
Nexsan, Pillar Data and Xiotech don’t demeanour to be in a position where they could accept more
funding, or have an IPO (with a probable difference of Nexsan) or be bought. Instead, the
foreseeable destiny appears to be one of organic expansion with backers cashing out what they can by
way of distinction when expansion has been clever adequate to aver an IPO.
Are there common factors that combine these 3 companies, or are they 3 special cases that
for one reason or another are clever adequate not to have failed, yet not propitious or shining enough
to have been bought or left for IPO yet? Let’s try a issue.
Nexsan
Nexsan competes with a Fibre Channel SAN storage
array vendors. The split Nexsan offers is a claimed cost-effectiveness and firmness of
it SATAbeast and SATAboy arrays. Nexsan grew good enough, notwithstanding a foe adopting some of
its technology, to inspire a government to try for an IPO in 2008.
But marketplace conditions as retrogression loomed were inauspicious, and Nexsan’s story and product
range were not clever or differentiated enough, and a IPO was pulled.
Two years after Nexsan attempted again for an IPO. By afterwards it charity spin-down in a arrays and
positioned them as energy-efficient hoop archives, like those from Copan (which subsequently
crashed and burned). Once again, marketplace conditions were opposite it, and a IPO was cancelled in
April 2010.
Now Nexsan has rebranded, with a E Series arrays directed during midmarket customers, and it is
growing again. One sight of suspicion is that Nexsan has attempted to boost margins by positioning itself
as a reward low-end or midrange retailer yet that this has non-stop it adult to foe from the
likes of Infortrend and Promise, thereby tying Nexsan’s marketplace reach. We shall have to see how
this plays out as it tries for an IPO again this year.
Pillar Data
Pillar Data, a origination of IBM storage maestro Mike Workman, grown an innovative
three-component architecture, with storage Bricks, I/O controller Slammers and handling Pilots in
its Axiom SAN arrays. The radical thought here was to short-stroke a drives, positioning information that
needed quick entrance on a outdoor marks of a drives and minimising read/write conduct find time while
filling a middle marks with reduction active data.
Thus Pillar could offer opposite qualities of storage use from a same set of hoop drives.
The Axiom program was grown to extend this, adding in information insurance and high availability,
for example, and new hardware storage tiers were combined to emanate a absolute offering.
Pillar competed with 3PAR and Compellent,
and a severe positioning was that 3PAR’s InServ overlapped a Axiom yet went aloft adult the
enterprise storage ladder. Compellent also overlapped Pillar yet went reduce down a SMB ladder.
These dual Pillar competitors incited out to be well-positioned, with Compellent’s products matching
gaps in Dell’s operation when it wanted to mangle giveaway from EMC, and 3PAR’s providing a surrogate for a
tired HP EVA line and a OEMed XP from Hitachi.
Pillar has an eager and constant patron base, as good as a good growth programme for
its Axiom hardware and software. But, life has turn harder as a HP and Dell channels now push
competing products, yet Pillar is not daunted and should continue growing. And don’t forget,
Pillar is financially corroborated by Oracle’s Larry Ellison with a probable outcome that it is folded
into that sovereignty to fill a need for second era SAN storage in a Sun stable.
Xiotech
Xiotech is a aristocrat of hermetic bin hoop drives. Its radical thought was to organisation a garland of
disk drives together and conduct them with worldly Seagate-derived expostulate program that could
recover apparently damaged drives and keep them working. It provides a sealed enclosure, called the
Intelligent Storage Element (ISE), a singular judicious hoop that has a five-year guaranty against
failure. This means a storage array built of ISE storage blades is inherently some-more arguable than
traditional SAN arrays and doesn’t need a required storage array controller.
ISE is a good fit for higher-level storage smoke-stack program products such as Storage Foundation
from Symantec and DataCore’s SANsymphony. SSD support is being combined to urge performance, which
was already good, and ISEs are appearing in blue-chip craving information centres. Now there is speak of
a partnership with Sanbolic with a Melio FS SAN record complement layered atop Xiotech’s ISE storage
blades.
Xiotech’s ISE record came when it acquired a record and product organisation from Seagate. We
can assume that Xiotech, notwithstanding carrying good record and product, has not been a aim of
acquisition attempts by mainstream storage array vendors since a record is too disruptive.
Xiotech has to grow a business itself, but a accelerative change of an acquisition.
This is what links it to Nexsan and Pillar Data. The 3 were not snapped adult in a new few
years of storage merger unrestrained since they did not compare adult with any intensity acquiring
companies’ product and marketplace gaps or weaknesses, not since their record was inferior.
In a storage marketplace bestrewn with casualties and failures, they have survived and grown and are
now creation their possess way.
Their categorical split is that these 3 storage array vendors yield best-of-breed
product in a storage marketplace niches they sell into. That’s their challenge, and as prolonged as they
keep flourishing their business and building their products to keep adult with a trends affecting
their customers, they should be set fair.
21 Apr 2011
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