But plans to join are the operative words here, as Cereva has filed a breach of contract suit against Lieto, which Cereva sources say is expected to be heard in a court in Massachusetts this week. Cereva is not giving out further details right now.
Insiders at Pirus say the case rests on whether their company is found to be a direct competitor to Cereva. If it is, Lieto may have to do some gardening for awhile. Stay tuned.
While both companies fall into a fairly small market niche, there are distinct differences. Cereva is building a large-scale SAN-in-a-box product that includes a switch and storage array and is pitched against products from EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC).
Pirus is building just the switch and will compete more directly with networking players such as Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD)
, McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDT), and Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), among others. (For a more detailed analysis on how the SAN market is divided up, see Virtual Reality?).
So why the fight over Lieto? Former colleagues say Lietos blend of skills in LAN and SAN switching are a perfect fit for Pirus as it builds its hybrid Fiber Channel/Ethernet switch. Prior to joining Cereva, Lieto was head of data networking sales at Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU), a role he assumed when the telecom equipment giant acquired his employer, Gigabit Ethernet switch maker Prominet.
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