SearchStorage UK
Why are EMC, HP and IBM So Tentative about Clustered NAS Filers?
12/22/2008
"High-performance and scalable storage technology is hard to do. Just ask Alex Bouzari, the co-founder and CEO of DataDirect Networks. But when you do get it right, customers flock to your door. Clustered filers are hard work. Just ask Sujal Patel, CEO of Isilon Systems. Even when your firm has a winning technology, mistaken senior managers can put your very existence at risk. But Patel came back as CEO and the rescue of Isilon is proceeding apace, as customers buy the company's fast filer products.
It may appear that Isilon more or less invented clustered filers, although it shares supplying highly scalable and very fast storage to the digital media and HPC markets with DataDirect Networks, which does block storage as well as files in its S2A storage appliances.
For both Isilon and DataDirect, their operating systems and system software sets are mature but still being further developed, and their hardware architecture is also on a development roadmap. Both companies have a steady stream of customer wins, and in their areas of clustered and/or highly scalable storage at petabyte-plus levels, as well as high-performance storage, they have established themselves as worthwhile suppliers.
Which begs the question: Why haven't EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp and Sun been able to match the products of DataDirect and Isilon?"