OuterBay's specialized software for moving data in and out of Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) databases, isn't so special anymore. Everyone, including the established software vendors, are doing it now, which makes OuterBay's task all the more difficult. At least one other startup, Princeton Softech Inc., offers the same software; and about 20 other companies are tackling the provisioning issue in different ways (see Policy-Based Storage).
For this reason, OuterBay will lie low in the Bit Bucket for a while, until the market makes up its mind how this functionality should be deployed.
Meanwhile, SAN management software player InterSAN is another one fighting for air in an overcrowded market. Its software falls into the storage resource management (SRM), device discovery, and virtualization markets, all being subsumed into storage management by larger players like Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) (NYSE: CA) and Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS).
Battling the big guys will get harder and harder for the startups, particularly those like InterSAN (a former No. 1 on our list) that started early and are getting squeezed financially. Customer announcements from InterSAN seem to be thin on the ground these days, too, and now we've heard that it's looking for a CEO to try to turn things around (see Who's In at InterSAN?
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.
