Data compression and encryption chipmaker is to acquire
iSCSI San startup Siafu Software LLC for an undisclosed amount.
The two companies have been working together for just over a
year now, as Siafu was using Hifn's
data compression and data encryption chips in its Swarm and
Sypher iSCSI storage appliances.
According to Russ Dietz, chief technology officer at Hifn, the
company is looking to move "up the food chain" from storage system
components to selling storage systems themselves. The company
already works with a number of OEM partners to sell its chips,
including EMC, Network Appliance (NetApp), IBM and FalconStor
Software. Its compression chips are frequently used in virtual tape
libraries (VTL) and can be used to further data reduction ratios on
data deduplication systems, including products from Sepaton
.
Now, Dietz said, OEMs are looking for complete storage system
packages to sell at the low end of the market. And, Siafu's
products, which are targeted at that same market while already
incorporating Hifn's chips, will now be sold to those customers, as
well as through Siafu's already established channel.
The companies had a close partnership already, according to John
Matze, CEO and founder of Siafu and now vice president of business
development for Hifn. But Siafu has several patents pending on its
products, including one for the ability to integrate encryption
into the iSCSI I/O stream, as well as an approach to writing
encrypted data from VTL disk to tape that doesn't require sending
data through the backup server.
Another area Dietz said the newly merged companies are looking
to develop is data reduction for primary storage, a space where one
startup, Storewiz Inc., has already begun shipping product, and
more startups are beginning to emerge from stealth.
According to IDC analyst Benjamin Woo, putting both encryption
and data reduction, whether data compression or data deduplication,
into a hardware offload engine and performing both inline as part
of larger systems is the way the market in general is headed.
"There's no question there's a desire from everyone from end users
to vendors to look at primary data reduction," he said. Hifn,
meanwhile, already has its boards and ASICs inside systems from
most of the big OEMs.
"We're hoping to help Tier 1 OEMs leapfrog that market," Dietz
said. "We will definitely be delivering something along those lines
to them."
"Siafu took some cryptic stuff on the chip side and made it easy
to sell to the SMB customer," said Arun Taneja, founder and analyst
with the Taneja Group, who has been working with Siafu as a
technical advisor. "Hifn saw that and scooped them up."