Vendors to watch in 2004

Several interesting vendors have appeared during the last year, and a few have, of course, disappeared as well.  Those companies that have failed have often taken tens of millions of dollars in venture capital down the tubes with them as they prepared for their final crash landings.   In at least one case, a West Coast storage start-up burned through $65 million in two-and-a-half years before it closed its doors.  How a company with less than 125 employees can burn through so much capital is a curiosity, and the fact that that the money came from top-tier venture firms is more curious still.  We can only speculate on how other (and presumably, more deserving) companies might have made use of all that cash.

Several interesting vendors have appeared during the last year, and a few have, of course, disappeared as well.  Those companies that have failed have often taken tens of millions of dollars in venture capital down the tubes with them as they prepared for their final crash landings. 

In at least one case, a West Coast storage start-up burned through $65 million in two-and-a-half years before it closed its doors.  How a company with less than 125 employees can burn through so much capital is a curiosity, and the fact that that the money came from top-tier venture firms is more curious still.  We can only speculate on how other (and presumably, more deserving) companies might have made use of all that cash.

At the other end of the spectrum, several companies have emerged from stealth mode and, often with significantly less investment, seem to be making a go of it.  Here are some interesting new companies to track during the next four quarters.  They interest me for several different reasons, but each is probably worth a few minutes of your time before you start your next buying cycle.  If any of my readers have experience with any of these vendors, please tell me about it.

* Celion Networks (http://www.celion.com)

Richardson, Texas Celion Networks has developed a technology for reducing costs associated with long-haul data transfer over fiber optic cable.  If you are looking for a way to support high bandwidth long-distance traffic over optical fiber, but until now have been put off by the costs of leased bandwidth, this company is certainly worth looking at.

* GlassHouse Technologies (https://www.glasshouse.com/)

In the two years since its founding, GlassHouse Technologies has become a well-respected provider of planning services in such areas as storage strategy, business continuity, and back-up and recovery strategies.  It sells no hardware or software, and so can be counted on to provide vendor-neutral assessments. 

* Intradyn (https://www.intradyn.com/)

Two-year-old Intradyn makes a back-up and archiving appliance that contains everything a small and midsized IT environment should need to implement a sound back-up strategy.  The box comes pre-configured with all the software and hardware needed for both local and remote backups.

* Panasas (http://www.panasas.com )

This company made a big splash when it entered the marketplace by announcing the largest installation of Linux-based storage yet.  The company’s high performance object-based storage is presently aimed at technical computing environments, but how long will it be before it extends its technology into the enterprise as well?

Next time, my letter to the storage Santa.