Crosswalk Walks Off the Lot

It's the end of the road for storage grid specialist Crosswalk, which has closed its doors after struggling to make its mark as a file system vendor.

With the firm's Website no longer up and running, Byte and Switch called Crosswalk yesterday to find out what was going on. A recorded message explained that "as of July 18th, Crosswalk has ceased all operations," confirming recent speculation that the vendor's number was up.

At time of writing, Crosswalk had not responded to a number of messages from Byte and Switch, including one left on the voicemail of CEO Jack McDonnell, who founded Crosswalk in 2004, a couple of years after leaving another firm he'd headed and founded -- McData.

While the reasons for Crosswalk's demise remain mysterious (for now), trouble was apparent. The grid vendor lost two other co-founders, Mark Stratton and Rob Kelley, late last year, amidst rumors that the former McData execs were pushed out by McDonnell. (See Startups Roll Heads, Reorganize.)

At the time, the vendor's reps said the execs' departure was a result of the company's switch in focus from resource management software to storage systems. (See Crosswalk Flips to File Side, Crosswalk 'Realigns', and Crosswalk Intros NAS Bundle.)Crosswalk's decision to recreate itself as a file system vendor was also controversial. It followed months of industry talk that McDonnell was growing impatient waiting for positive sales results. This was hardly surprising given that the former McData exec funded the startup himself by selling more than $6 million in McData stock.

So what happened? At least one analyst, who asked not to be named, thinks McDonnell may have reached the end of his tether. "I think that Jack just ran out of patience," he says. "I don't think that he saw the end of the money trail -- that would be my guess."

One thing is for certain: Crosswalk's desire to remake itself as a clustered file system vendor meant stiff competition from a slew of established rivals.

This was particularly true in the High Performance Computing (HPC) market where Crosswalk hoped to carve a niche for its flagship iGrid system. A host of vendors, including NetApp, ExaGrid, Exanet, Ibrix, Isilon, Panasas, and PolyServe, which is now part of HP, have similar products aimed at making NAS more manageable. (See Special Report: NAS Clustering and Virtualization , Cluster Clamor, and NetApp Nudges Closer to New OS.)

"Crosswalk was chasing a crowded market," says Greg Schulz of analyst firm StorageIO. "You have got all the established players and all the startups that are trying to get established."The vendor nonetheless had 12 iGrid units in production by last October. (See Crosswalk Unveils iGrid and Crosswalk Intros CFS.) Crosswalk also had at least three customers for iGrid, including service provider Front Range Internet and the Center of High Performance Computing (CHPC) at the University of Utah, neither of which responded to requests for comment. A third customer, Web conferencing firm ReadyTalk , refused to discuss its relationship with the startup when contacted yesterday.

Last November, Crosswalk unveiled enhancements to its iGrid product. Early this year, it also announced that the platform had received IBM certification. (See Crosswalk Expands Grids and IBM Endorses Crosswalk.)

Based in Westminster, Colo., Crosswalk's flagship product was its Crosswalk Storage Manager (CSM) software, which used McData's SANnavigator to discover and map storage networks and connected devices such as switches, HBAs, storage arrays, and tape devices from different vendors.