Candera Back for Seconds: Page 2 of 3

Candera VP of marketing and business development Steve Terlizzi hopes the new tack of adding controller to disk drive for a different market takes off. “Our long-term business is network controllers,” he says. “This is the easy way to introduce ATA without disrupting your existing environment. It gives you the ability to expand your infrastructure and the option to grow intelligence into the network.”

Analysts say the tack may help Candera get some life back into its main controller business. “This is a tactical solution that will allow Candera to get a footprint and potentially bring in other storage behind it,” says analyst Mike Fisch of The Clipper Group Inc.

The Candera appliance comes in four models ranging from 4 TBytes to 16 TBytes, with list price starting at $86,500. It includes proprietary management software and support from IBM Global Services. Terlizzi says the cost of getting the new hardware running is half as much as comparable Clariion systems, and he hopes to replace Clariion and other midrange systems connected to high-end arrays for secondary storage.

“We see them as secondary appliances between tapes and disk, used for disk-to-disk archiving and for less-than-mission-critical data,” he says.

The main value Candera brings is an alternative that acts like costlier controllers for applications that don't warrant the cost and complexity of a higher-end solution. “This is an excellent way to reengage with the market, because the market was not ready for their previous engagement,” Taneja says. “However, the market is in dire need of what Candera can do now, which is to virtualize a bunch of boxes to make it look like one. Candera pieces [together] integrated hardware and software, where Clariion is a piece of iron that someone has to put together.”