Is PCI-Attached Storage a Viable Alternative?

10:45 AM -- Recently, I spent some time speaking with Steve Katz, a vice president for OEM sales at JMR Electronics Inc. , where he presented the case for why PCI-attached storage is now a viable alternative for enterprises. Here is a short version of that conversation.

How long has JMR been selling storage?

Since 1982, starting with enclosures for the electronics industry for Apple and others that included PC manufacturers. We've had OEM contracts with companies like IBM, HP, Unisys, Dell, Avid, Fujitsu, and we are still a privately held company. Our latest storage offering, Bluestor, has been available since November 2007. We offer both JBOD and RAID for Sun, Linux Redhat, and SUSE along with Final Cut environments.

Who are your biggest competitors?

Fiber Channel players would be our biggest competitors, however we are the leader of the pack for PCI-attached storage.Describe your technology.

Our storage is PCI-direct attached and is JMR patented. It's like having your storage next to the CPU in terms of performance with the system. It's all serial PCI -- fast and wide and at a cost that runs around $1,000 per TB. It is all backward compatible on the PCI bus. Our enclosures use SAS or SATA disk drives, and we supply a PCI extender for all hosts. Our systems can emulate NAS or iSCSI, using appropriate software.

What keeps you up at night?

Not a lot, because we are doing very well. Most major potential competitors are not in the market with us, and we are protected by our patents. Customers include NASA, Texas Tech, Bloomberg, and those in the media industry. We supply to industries such as video surveillance, the PACS market, and the gaming industry.

How do you sell your products?We provide to OEMs who private label it, and also via authorized resellers that are technically trained to understand the technology.

The Trainer Test: Given JMRs commitment to the PCI-attach storage business, it seems clear that its PCI-storage is a viable alternative for the SMB-to-mid-tier server environment.

— Tom Trainer is founder and president of analyst firm Analytico. Prior to founding Analytico, Trainer was managing senior partner at Evaluator Group, and has also worked at EMC, HDS, Auspex, and Memorex-Telex during his 30-year career in IT.