Azul Spins With Tangosol

Data center startup Azul Systems Inc. has added software vendor Tangosol Inc. to its growing list of partners, although the company is keeping schtum on takeup of its technology (see Azul Partners With Tangosol).

Azul claims a new approach to dealing with data center workloads. Traditionally, users have kept additional processing capacity within their servers to cope with peaks and troughs when dealing with Java-based applications. However, the startup now redirects these workloads to its family of Compute Appliances (see Cisco Resells Opnet Software and Azul Attacks Data Center Apps).

By offloading Java workloads to processors in its devices, the idea is that data center servers can be freed up to work on other things, and Azul has earned a reputation as something of a technology trailblazer (see Building Virtual Empires).

Tangosols flagship product is its Coherence software, which aims to remove network bottlenecks by helping large J2EE applications access database information. The Somerville, Mass., vendor targets the product at hardware grids and clusters, which are gaining momentum in data centers (see Buffalo Cluster's a Grid Cornerstone, D. E. Shaw Implements Sun Grid, and Keynote: Grids to Grow).

The two companies are now working together on joint sales and marketing activities.James Staten, Azul’s director of market development, tells NDCF that the Tangosol deal is the startup’s tenth partnership to date, although he says this number could more than double by the end of the year. “It’s hard to give a definitive answer,” he adds.

But, despite all its hype and partner activity, there are a lot of things Azul isn't talking about. For starters, it won't reveal the identities of its first customers, although execs recently told NDCF that a couple of deals had already been clinched and a bunch more were in the pipeline (see Azul Aces First Customers).

This week the company confirmed that a number of customer evaluations are underway in the U.K., Japan, and across the U.S., but was still unwilling to divulge any specifics.

Azul has been similarly tight-lipped concerning funding. The total amount of funding the company has received has not been disclosed publicly, but Azul is reported to have received several rounds totaling tens of millions of dollars.

Nonetheless, partnerships are a positive sign for a startup's success, according to Scott Donahue, vice president and senior analyst at Tier1 Research. “With Tangosol’s focus on grid and clustering it gives Azul a clear solution set to bring to the marketplace rather than just another hardware box,” he says.Azul, as well as adding partners, is also verifying interoperability with a range of applications, according to Staten. “There’s probably close to 100 applications that have been verified,” he says. “We will be putting that list out shortly.”

But Donahue warns that, despite Azul’s trailblazer status, the startup still has its work cut out. “As an early-stage company in a crowded marketplace, it’s an uphill battle,” he says. “They really need to build a couple of partner tracks -- one with the independent software vendors, the other with systems integrators or resellers.”

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum