DataCore Nabs Sales Honcho

Vic Mahadevan, president and CEO of MaXXan Systems Inc., outlined the SAN switch startup's goals for the first half of 2003. He summarized it like this: "I wake up each morning with a prayer -- Lord, give us this day our daily leverage." Partners, particularly in the software space, will be extremely important for MaXXan, he says.When it ships its 320-port MXV Intelligent Storage Switch and SG1000 NAS gateway this quarter, MaXXan expects to have several ISV partners, including Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT); global product support from Unisys (NYSE: UIS); and distribution partners ready to go. "We are at the stage of a small 's' for strategy and a giant 'E' for execution," Mahadevan says.

In addition, MaXXan is in discussions with the key OEM suspects. But, he notes, "This is a 9- to 12-month effort. The magic word is perseverance." He adds, "Customer trials are key to people buying into our vision." Unfortunately, there's no mention of those just yet.

Bob Hammer, CEO of backup software developer CommVault Systems Inc., said he's shooting to do $40 million to $50 million in revenue this year, and $80 million to $100 million in 2004.

He was responding to a question about how his company would attack the multibillion-dollar market opportunity for storage software. "I'm a little guy," Hammer said. "I don't need to be an $8 billion company. If I can do a couple hundred million in sales, I'm a happy camper."

Dave Roberson, president and COO of Hitachi Data Systems (HDS), boasted that HDS booked approximately the same amount of revenue in 2002 as EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) -- with one-seventh the number of salespeople.

Well... this is kind of a tricky statement. First of all, there's no way to verify how much money HDS brings in, since parent company Hitachi Ltd. (NYSE: HIT; Paris: PHA) doesn't break out those results.

Furthermore, HDS has two major resellers, Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), working on its behalf. Roberson acknowledged this, of course, but he says more than half of HDS's sales come through HDS. (We should also point out that EMC now has a strong, and growing, reseller partner in Dell Computer Corp. [Nasdaq: DELL].)Roberson maintains that HDS is in excellent financial shape. "We're growing, we're hiring, and we're profitable. I don't think you can find too many companies that are saying that today."

What's Sun's new mandate in the storage market? Same as the old one. "We want to dominate storage on the Sun platform," said Rich Napolitano, VP of Sun's data services platform group and the former CEO of Pirus (see Sun Beams on Pirus). Added Napolitano: "We can say that, now that the federal government isn't as sensitive about that word anymore." Cheeky! He was alluding to the fact that the U.S. Department of Justice settled its antitrust case against Microsoft last fall with terms very favorable to the Redmondians.

Of course, one would have expected Sun to have done a better job of selling storage to its own customers in years past. But that's all water under the bridge at this point.

Meanwhile, James Staten, director of software marketing in Sun's network storage division, noted that in the last year Sun has broadened its storage portfolio at both ends of the spectrum: It has the HDS deal on the high end and Dot Hill Systems Corp. (NYSE: HIL) at the low (see Sun Shines on Hitachi and Dot Hill Becomes Sun Worshipper