Thats cheap, compared with installing a Fibre Channel SAN, but still quite a chunk of change to hand over to a new startup pushing a technology that has yet to go mainstream. While a few startups are shipping or working on similar products, Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) seems to be the only major competition for iSCSI-enabled servers at the moment. Other startups in this space include EqualLogic Inc. and LeftHand Networks, but LeftHand's system uses a proprietary protocol instead of iSCSI (see EqualLogic Unfurls iSCSI Flag, LeftHand Snatches $20M, and NetApp's IP SAN Wins a Fan).
For most companies, however, the choice wont be which iSCSI product to buy, but whether to take the leap of faith into IP in the first place. Intransas primary competition will probably come from low-end SAN array vendors like Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ).
Eugénie Larson, Reporter, Byte and Switch
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