Sun Microsystems launches a wave of storage improvements, Maxtor has a new personal hard drive, Adaptec wins a significant Japanese customer, NetOctave obtains more funding, and much more storage news.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [February 19, 2002]

Sun Microsystems launched a wave of new software and hardware products to improve its Sun StorEdge Complete Storage Solutions. New elements include Storage ONE, modeled after the company's Open Net Environment, and Sun StorEdge QFS and SAM-FS software, scalable to 252 TB and beyond. Sun is also rolling out new co-marketing programs, new training programs, three new storage centers, and is updating its Sun StorEdge line of storage consolidation products. Further software improvements were also announced.

In a week full of Microsoft .NET-related announcements, other Microsoft business continued. MTI Technology unveiled the StingRay NAS, which is based on the Microsoft Server Appliance Kit (SAK). A combined NAS and SAN product, the StingRay starts at $88,600.

Microsoft's seminar outreach for its Server Appliance Kit, the SAK Awareness Road Show has completed its tour of the United States and is currently in Brazil, traveling to Mexico in March, 2002.

Maxtor announced a new personal hard drive, the Personal Storage 3000LE. With USB and FireWire (IEEE 1394) ports, the 120 GB device is up to date with the latest connectors, and will retail at $299.95. The 40 GB version of the same model will retail at $199.95. Maxtor is hoping that SOHO and home users with outdated USB 1.1 technology will upgrade to faster USB 2.0 by purchasing the Maxtor USB 2.0 PCI Adapter Card, which retails at $49.95.

Adaptec announced that Japan Computing Systems will incorporate its 2005S zero channel RAID into JCS' next 1U rackmount storage product, which will be called Type GT. Zero channel RAID (ZCR) is Adaptec's name for its technology that allows RAID controllers to be attached to the PCI slots of computers, enabling a more compact design for dense servers, and Adaptec claims that the 2005S is the world's smallest RAID controller.

Data Direct Networks, a storage company serving processor-intensive corporate behemoths in such industries as broadcasting, oil and gas, and defense contracting, announced a partnership with broadcast editing software designer Incite. The partnership will deploy Incite's video and audio editing software on Data Direct Networks' Silicon Storage Appliance, which can support up to 512 users and manage 180 TB of data.

Storage in the real world
We're noticing more and more actual implementations of storage networks, in addition to new equipment designed and sold for them. In a real world customer win, Teradata, a division of Taiwan's NCR, announced that British Airways will consolidate a worldwide storage network previously based on multiple platforms (IBM, Oracle, and Teradata) onto the Teradata platform in a single data warehouse. British Airways cited Teradata's scalability as a key factor in its decision. In similar news, the China Construction Bank selected Teradata to build the first enterprise data warehouse in the Chinese banking industry.

Switch and Data, a large U.S. carrier-neutral colo provider, partnered with SiteLite a Management Services Provider (MSP), to provide co-branded managed services to Switch and Data's customers. Switch and Data's latest announced customer win is Canadian-American SSP Storage @ccess Technologies.

As competition gets tougher, it also gets more bitter. Storage Computer filed a second patent infringement suit against industry titan Veritas Software. Storage Computer alleges that Veritas violated Storage Computer's patent for "Data Storage System with Asynchronous Host Operating System Communication Link."

Further financing fun
LiveVault obtained $7 million in seventh round financing and appointed Robert A. Cramer, a board member since April 2000, its new president and CEO. Founder and former CEO John B. Butler, Jr. will lead a strategic business development effort and will work with the incoming CEO.

LDIC acquired the products and patents (but not employees or physical assets) of Halo Data Devices, a 1" disk drive manufacturer founded in 1998. LDIC is privately held and is based in San Jose, California. Halo Data Devices' website appears to be offline.

Intransa, a storage company that has not yet produced products, obtained $10 million in second round financing. The company aims to build high performance, scalable storage devices that use Ethernet technology to keep management relatively simple. The company's management team includes high-powered former 3Com and Palm executives, and its Board of Directors includes venture capitalists from U.S. Venture Partners, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Sofinnova, as well as Peter Wang, the former CEO of 3Com, and Steven Johnson, a private investor and the founder of Komag. Komag is a supplier to Seagate, Maxtor, and Western Digital that is currently in Chapter 11.

A large number of security firms are obtaining funding, but most are only tangentially related to storage. One of note, however, is NetOctave, a producer of silicon based security solutions for a variety of applications including storage networks. NetOctave claims its NSP4200 Security Processor is the first ever designed specifically for IP storage traffic. The company obtained $7.8 million in second round funding.

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