MaXXan Axxes Staff

SAN switch startup MaXXan Systems Inc. last month cut about 20 percent of its staff, sources tell Byte and Switch. But the company says it's simply making the transition into go-to-market mode and that it has recently been hiring sales and systems engineers.

Jeff Silva, MaXXan's VP of marketing and co-founder, says the company is moving "out of the product-development phase" and, as such, "[we] have reduced some of our engineering resources, mostly in the board design, power, and mechanical engineering areas."

Part of this transition, Silva says, involved consolidating MaXXan's hardware development teams to its San Jose, Calif., headquarters last month. Before that, the startup had hardware development split between Houston and San Jose. Now the Houston site is responsible for system software development and system integration and test activities.

Silva wouldn't tell us how many "engineering resources" were let go, but he says the company currently has 87 employees, including recent hires. "We believe our skill sets are well balanced between engineering and sales and marketing to support the next phase of our company's growth," he says. In 2002, the startup says, it had a peak headcount of 97.

MaXXan has raised more than $73 million to date from a long list of investors, which include U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock Associates, and Lucent Venture Partners Inc. (see MaXXan Mixxes Message and MaXXan Wins $25M).Late last year, MaXXan completed the development of its high-scale MXV320 switch -- which offers up to 320 Fibre Channel ports in a single chassis -- and it's currently in end-user field trials. The switch is designed to host multiple storage management applications, including virtualization, data replication, snapshotting, and NAS gateway functions. It also provides user-configurable ports, which can be set for either Fibre Channel or Gigabit Ethernet running the Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) protocol (for more background, see Storage Networking Basics).

In a move apparently intended to scare up some sales until the MXV320 starts generating revenue, MaXXan teamed with Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) to develop a NAS gateway device that integrates Veritas's ServPoint software (see MaXXan Sells Veritas-'Powered' NAS and Veritas Scraps ServPoint Strategy).

MaXXan is undoubtedly facing an extremely challenging market for its high-port-count system. Among other things, there are several other startups developing similar "intelligent" SAN switches, including Candera Inc., Maranti Networks, and Sanera Systems Inc. (see Can Candera Compete?, Smart SAN Switches: Not This Year, Maranti Hires SAN Virtuoso, Sanera Founder Says Sayonara, and Sanera Tightens Its Belt).

Meanwhile, two others -- Pirus Networks and Rhapsody Networks -- were acquired last year by, respectively, Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD). Brocade's move was seen in part as a defensive maneuver to counter Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), which is developing higher-layer features for its own Fibre Channel switches through the Andiamo Systems Inc. spin-in (see Brocade Reupholsters Rhapsody, Cisco Takes Spinnaker for a Spin, and Pirus Gets Sun Tan).

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch