But Sun has sidelined the iSCSI and file system technologies that Pirus spent significant engineering resources developing. Napolitano, who's now VP of the newly created Data Services Platform Group in Sun's storage division, says his group's top priority now is to find the "quickest path to revenue" and that the market for IP SANs simply isn't ready yet.
"I think we overestimated, ourselves, how fast iSCSI would be adopted," he says, when asked if there was anything he would have done differently at Pirus. "Fortunately, our proposition was broad enough that we could morph we could deemphasize iSCSI, focus on Fibre Channel, or NAS, wherever the market opportunity is."
Napolitano started his career in high tech at Digital Equipment Corp. After that, he became director of software at BluePoint Technologies, which was acquired by Adobe Systems Inc. in 1989. He then founded Data Kinesis, a hardware RAID and file system controller developer, which he sold to Adaptec Inc. (Nasdaq: ADPT) in 1996.
But he doesn't see another startup in his future, saying he's committed to building Sun's storage business. Besides, Napolitano doesn't want to tempt fate: "You start doing the math of the probabilities [of successfully launching a startup], and it starts getting very, very small of hitting another one."
Read Napolitano's full interview with US Editor Todd Spangler by clicking on the links below:
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
