New storage IPOs report losses
Of the 2006 "graduating class" of storage IPOs, two reported losses this week in their first quarter as public companies.
New IPOs report results
Riverbed and Isilon reported losses this week, Double Take is in the clear and Mellanox went public.
WAFS provider Riverbed reported $33.8 million in fourth-quarter revenues, an increase of 37% from the previous quarter and 219% from the same period last year. But on a Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) basis, Riverbed's losses narrowed to $2.4 million, or 4 cents per share, compared to a net loss of $4.7 million, or 43 cents per share, during the same quarter a year ago.
NAS clustering vendor Isilon reported a loss of $3.3 million on revenue of $20.7 million last quarter, compared to a loss of $4.1 million on revenue of $8.7 million in last year's quarter. For the full year, Isilon lost $16.4 million on $62.3 million in revenue, compared to a loss of $19.1 million on $21.1 million in revenue in 2005.
Not to be scared off, Mellanox, the InfiniBand chip firm began trading publicly this week at $17 per share, higher than its original target range of $12 to $14 set last month and above the revised range of $14 to $16 it announced Tuesday. Mellanox sold 6 million shares and raised $102 million, well above the $86.25 million it hoped for when filing for the IPO in September.
EMC and FalconStor extend VTL deal
FalconStor will announce Monday that its virtual tape library (VTL) partnership with EMC has been extended through 2013. FalconStor's software and EMC's Clariion disk arrays are bundled and rebranded the EMC Disk Library.
In a separate release, QLogic announced that EMC has certified its new SANbox 9000 directors as e-Lab tested for use with Clariion and Symmetrix arrays.
Sun executive vows storage growthIn a presentation at Sun's analyst summit on Wednesday, the executive vice president of Sun's storage division, David Yen, gave a presentation on Sun's strategy for growing its storage line over the next year. Yen said his group has vowed to "drive storage profit margins above the company average going forward."
The presentation was largely an outline of Sun's existing product portfolio (the 6920, rumored to have been sold off to Hitachi (HDS), was nowhere to be found in a slide detailing the Sun disk portfolio), but there were a few tidbits sprinkled in about future direction. Sun's strategy includes plans to introduce a new midrange tape library product called Crimson in 2008 to fit between the smaller SL500 and the RV-sized SL8500. According to Yen, device-level encryption will be expanded beyond the T10000 drives (the capability was announced last year). Next year, the T10000 tape cartridge capacity will also double to 1 terabyte (TB), he said -- the "performance drive" 9840 will boost capacity from 80 GB while retaining performance of 30 megabytes per second (MBps). Yen also hyped future applications for the X4500 storage server, also known as Thumper, saying that software will be laid over the disks in the box for specific functionality, including VTL, NAS, video surveillance, data warehousing and that "most likely [you] will see third parties rolling out Thumper-based products."
Brocade plans blade server SAN interoperability
Brocade introduced new capabilities that enable interoperability between Brocade blade server SAN switches and products from other SAN switch and director manufacturers. The new feature, known as Brocade Access Gateway, will be the first product that Brocade is positioning as fulfilling its commitment to interoperability between Brocade switches and the large installed base of McData SANs. Brocade Access Gateway will be available on Brocade-bladed SAN switches from Hewlett-Packard (HP), IBM, Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens. The new capabilities from Brocade use N_Port ID Virtualization, and no shipment date was given for the product. Brocade said it was with OEMs now and tentatively slated for the second half of 2007.
Neoscale, Decru partner with EMC
Both NeoScale and Network Appliance (NetApp) subsidiary Decru announced a strategic partnership with EMC security subsidiary RSA for encryption over the wire. EMC also made a small security acquisition this week, snapping up privately held, India-based file and data security software startup Valyd Software Private Ltd., for an undisclosed sum.
IBM touts customer wins
IBM announced that the town of Marana, Ariz., has replaced HP systems with IBM System Storage and IBM BladeCenter systems for all of its departments, including police, utilities, finance, human resources, and operations and maintenance. The contract, signed in December, calls for IBM to provide installation services for 20 IBM BladeCenter systems and the IBM System Storage DS4700 Express SAN and the IBM System Storage TS3310 LTO library, as well as Tivoli Storage Manager and TotalStorage productivity center software. In a separate announcement, IBM said that San Diego Supercomputing Center will use IBM's 3599 tape media, able to store up to 700 GB on a single cartridge. Finally, the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation announced it will induct two IBM inventors, William Goddard and John Lynott, who developed the first commercial hard-disk drive system.
Tek-Tools expands storage reporting
Tek-Tools announced expanded SAN support for its Profiler Suite, for storage arrays from EMC, IBM, HP, HDS, LSI and NetApp. Profiler's expanded support provides normalized views, regardless of the storage platform and strategic, as well as tactical, reports that cover the entire SAN environment.
Cookware company dumps Veritas for outsourcer Asigra
Asigra announced that managed services provider Stack Computer Solutions Ltd., has deployed Asigra's backup and recovery software, Televaulting, to provide an outsourced backup service to Meyer Group, a manufacturer of gourmet cookware and kitchenware. Prior to employing the services of Stack, Meyer was using a Veritas tape-based backup infrastructure and wanted to switch to disk to disk. Meyer also wanted emails to be included in the backups, so it didn't have to be backed up on a per PC basis and to be able to restore data at the message level.
Air Force base picks Diligent
Diligent announced that a U.S. Air Force base near Colorado Springs, Colo., has installed Diligent's deduping Protec-Tier VTL for classified backup and restore operations. The unnamed base was assisted in the installation by VAR Abba Technologies.
Agfa HealthCare certifies EqualLogic
EqualLogic announced that Agfa HealthCare has certified its PS Series iSCSI storage arrays to support Agfa's IMPAX Radiology Information System and Picture Archiving and Communication System (RIS/PACS). The company also announced that Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston, W. Va., is deploying more than 160 TB of raw EqualLogic storage with the RIS/PACS system.
Nexsan updates performance, security in SATABoy
Nexsan announced upgrades to its SATABeast and SATABoy storage products that it claims boost iSCSI performance. This firmware upgrade brings performance to 100 MBps for Nexsan RAID storage using a single iSCSI port, and 180 MBps using dual ports, the company said. The upgrade will be standard for all SATABeast and SATABoy systems shipped as of today and is available as a free firmware update for existing customers.
DriveSavers steps in after 'meltdown'
DriveSavers, a data recovery company, reported that its services recovered data for the Center for Better Hearing Aids, a retail business that markets hearing devices in San Jose, Calif, after a fire destroyed the company's offices. DriveSavers said it recovered the company's entire database of business and patient records stored on a RAID array that melted in the flames.
Emulex adds module for Sun Blade 8000
Emulex announced a new 4 Gbps Fibre Channel 20-port Network Express Module and 2-port ExpressModule host bus adapter for Sun's Sun Blade 8000 Modular System. These new Emulex SAN connectivity components provide 4 Gbps Fibre Channel host bus adapter functionality for the blade chassis, external to the individual blade servers.
Siafu ships encrypted iSCSI
Siafu announced that hardware-based AES 256 data encryption is now offered as a standard feature on all Siafu Swarm Series RAID arrays. Siafu Swarm IP encrypted SAN appliances are available in 1U, 2U, 3U and 6U configurations with storage capacities ranging from 1 TB to 7.5 TB raw, starting at $8,995.
