Startups Abuzz Over Intelligence

In the wake of last month's demonstration of a storage router by EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), a handful of ambitious startups is campaigning for virtualization (see EMC Takes Storage Router for a Spin).

"Now that EMC is finally talking about its intelligent switch, theres a great buzz. We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” crows Joel Warford, VP of marketing at Aarohi Communications. Instead of criticizing EMC for pushing a product more than six months before it is ready to ship, Aarohi and likeminded startups such as Incipient Inc. welcome EMC bringing the topic to light (see Report: Switch Is Best for Virtualization).

Indeed, the fact that EMC is talking virtualization and device intelligence is a bit of a light at the end of a tunnel. “You have EMC starting to talk about their vision, and you’ll start to see a lot of evangelical work by them,” says Robert Infantino, spokesman for Incipient. “That’s only going to help us.”

The new companies are convinced that despite well publicized differences among big players about how intelligence should be implemented in SANs, there's a good chance no single vendor will have complete say (see EMC on Virtualization: Wait for Us).

Instead, the startups maintain, we'll see intelligent features spread around -- some in switches from the likes of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), and McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA), and others in storage gear from EMC, Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), and Engenio Information Technologies Inc.Chipmaker Aarohi is covering all its bases. It provides the chips to McData for one of the intelligent switches that EMC has targeted to run with its storage router. But Aarohi’s deal with McData isn’t exclusive, even though McData is an investor, so Aarohi also wants to supply Brocade and Cisco with intelligent chips for their second-generation intelligent switches (see Aarohi Announces Funding... Again). (Whether that plan will catch on with the other switchmakers remains questionable, though.)

Aarohi also is looking to use its chip to power other intelligent appliances. Marketing VP Joel Warford says Aarohi is chasing deals with a bunch of major players, including Engenio, IBM, Hitachi, HP, and Sun. “We don’t just focus on the switch,” he says. No matter how it shakes out, he hopes his company will be able to ship chips in volume in the second half of 2005 to fuel intelligent devices (see Aarohi Delivers FabricStream).Incipient is another startup riding on the success of intelligent devices. Incipient developed its software specifically to sit on switches and handle volume management, provisioning, migration, snapshot, and mirroring, but it needs a partner to take it to market (see Incipient Looks to Deal).

Because it competes with EMC’s storage router software, Incipient needs to deal with other storage OEMs, either directly or through switch vendors. Incipient has a close relationship with Brocade and a partnership with Aarohi that could put it on those McData switches sold by others besides EMC (see Incipient Demos Fabric-Based Storage and Aarohi Intros Smart Storage Chips).

Infantino says Incipient has no OEM deals to announce yet, but at least one is incipient and should be concluded by the time EMC ships its storage router.Aarohi and Incipient aren't alone in waiting for the virtualization ship to come in. A slew of others are waiting on the wharf, including intelligent switch vendors Maranti Networks Inc. and MaXXan Systems Inc. (see MaXXan Intros Intelligent SAN Switch and Maranti Makes It to Market).

StoreAge Networking Technologies Ltd., Kashya Inc., and Alacritus Software Inc. also are shipping products with software they can port onto intelligent switches (see Replication's All the Rage).

StoreAge, the first to advocate the out-of-band virtualization that EMC has adopted, provides snapshots, replication, and mirroring, and partners with Brocade, McData, and Aarohi (see StoreAge, Aarohi Demo SAN DR and StoreAge Parent Disbanding). Kashya sells data replication appliances and Alacritus disk backup software, and both have partnerships with Brocade, Cisco, and Aarohi that will bring them into the intelligent device game (see Cisco Demos New Interface and Kashya Makes Kopies).

— Dave Raffo, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch