Cisco Systems is to acquire privately held file virtualisation
partner, NeoPath Networks. Financial terms of the deal were not
disclosed.
NeoPath's File Director product is an in-band appliance that
creates a virtualisation layer between a user's clients and file
servers, decoupling the file name paths from their physical
locations. This turns large numbers of file systems into a single
logical pool of storage making the environment simpler to manage.
NeoPath markets two appliances: the rack-mounted File Director 220
and the blade-based File Director 7200.
Cisco made a strategic investment in NeoPath last April, one month
after networking competitor Brocade Communications Systems snapped
up file virtualisation startup NuView Systems Inc.
"That Cisco would be looking to move deeper into this space is
not surprising," said Steve Duplessie, founder and analyst with the
Enterprise Strategy Group. "It's still a nascent market, but file
virtualisation is very interesting."
Since its acquisition of NuView, Brocade has been aggressively
marketing products based on the intellectual property acquired with
the startup and promoting the term file area network (FAN).
Meanwhile, Cisco has been relatively quiet with NeoPath and has
also touted its relationship with EMC Corp.'s Rainfinity subsidiary
for file virtualisation.
However, according to Duplessie, the network-based writing was
on the wall for Cisco. "Inevitably all layers of infrastructure in
the data center have to be abstracted in order to mitigate the
effect of changes on the environment," he said. "Cisco is obviously
a big believer in services, like file virtualisation in the
network."
Brocade might be taking a deep breath as Cisco barges into a
market space, virtualisation, it had been leading thus far, but
Duplessie said the implications of Cisco's entry into this market
go beyond its storage networking competitors.
"Cisco's lineage is IP, and IP is inherently more conducive to
network attached storage (NAS) operations than Fibre Channel,"
Duplessie said. "This has an impact not only on Brocade but
potentially on everyone who makes an Ethernet switch as well."
Other companies in this space include Network
Appliance (NetApp), Acopia Networks and Attune Systems.
Acopia CEO Chris Lynch dismissed the deal as a "toe in the
water" for Cisco, claiming NeoPath's technology is "limited in
scope." He said Cisco had talked with Acopia but wasn't willing to
stump up enough money. "We think Acopia is a $1 billion company on
its way to a successful IPO."