Our other niggling issue with BlueArc is that the majority of its sales are in the high-performance computing (HPC) area, which isnt a huge sector. And, should EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) or Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) decide to redouble their efforts in this space down the road, BlueArc could be in trouble.
For now, though, the company is still winning deals, increasing headcount, and holding its own. For this reason, BlueArc continues to merit a place in our top five.
Staying put at No. 4 is NAS virtualization software startup NuView Inc.
NuView is the only company in the known universe doing what its doing. Its product, StorageX, acts as a kind of metadirectory for NAS namespaces, providing an abstraction layer that allows an administrator to modify or move NAS servers without needing to change how users gain access to them. The software, which runs on a Windows 2000 server, also provides a consolidated view of multiple NAS devices. The latest version supports the Network File Systems (NFS) protocol, opening the product up to the Unix world, which was a crucial move for the company (see NuView Fills Out).
The startup has landed more than 10 large customers, including Extreme Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: EXTR), Lockheed Martin Corp., T. Rowe Price, and Unocal Corp., which have bought and installed the software for a variety of uses, including namespace management, NAS consolidation, and providing failover for Windows servers. NuView apparently has plenty more customers up its sleeve, courtesy of its OEM relationship with Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP), but it's prohibited from naming these.
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