Many of Tangent's storage arrays are bundled with Unix- or Linux-based servers built for video surveillance providers, said COO Mike Zabaneh, adding success in the custom storage space came from looking for areas where storage is growing fast but competition isn't.
"We saw [the surveillance] market early and got well-known," Zabaneh said. "Prices in this space have moved out of this world. Now we need to find new areas like this."
Minneapolis-based Reason, meanwhile, has found a niche building direct-attached arrays and NAS appliances for the Geowall Consortium, a group that develops 3-D imaging systems for the education, medical and oil- exploration fields. "These chew up terabytes of storage and has driven us into Linux clustering," said Dominic Daninger, vice president of engineering at Reason.
Increasing capacity requirements are pushing customers of Dex Computer Center, Poway, Calif., to increase their orders for custom-built storage systems, said Jim Kiesow, owner and manager.
In particular, Kiesow said many customers have recently started looking to him for custom storage boxes to handle their growing e-mail archives. Engineers are also interested in customized storage for projects that generate ever-larger volumes of data.
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