As previously stated (Budding Innovation) the storage industry is rich on innovation and VC investment. Enough customers are ready to endorse new ways of engineering storage and investors hope for handsome rewards.
Nimble Storage is a new vendor and has a new take on delivering better storage performance. It inserts NVRAM, DRAM and a cache of flash based SSD in the path for traditional RAID-6 HDDs. The data is compressed and delivered in sequential writes to the HDDs and high performance reads from the SSDs. It’s arrays are built on a unique storage layout to eliminate performance sins of traditional arrays. And interestingly, it tries to minimise the wear and tear of the SSD layer.
It is aimed at medium sized customers who may traditionally consider Dell EquaLogic solutions and being ready to spend $50K for an array. Nimble’s executives come from well-known larger competitors and has grown its workforce to more than 150. The growth plan is well articulated and expected to follow in the foot path of other storage vendors who soon IPOed and then got bought the larger portfolio vendors. This pattern demands swift ramp-up in revenues and global growth based on a reseller network.
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