How's this for holiday cheer: Within the last month, almost $130 million has been invested in technology startups targeting the storage networking sector. Thats on top of the $2.4 billion already invested in over one hundred companies now jostling for position in this marketplace (see Venture Capital Survey).
Have the VCs lost the plot completely? Or are there still sectors of this market that are worth sinking more investment into?
Table 1: SAN startups funded - 11/20/01 - 12/20/01
| Company | Market sector | Amount funded | Date |
| Aristos Logic | SAN processors | $15.5m | 12/19/2001 |
| Exanet | Clustering software | $17m | 12/4/2001 |
| Lane15 | InfiniBand software | $12m | 12/11/2001 |
| Maranti | SAN switch | $25m | 12/14/2001 |
| NextGig | SAN processors | $15m | 11/23/2001 |
| Nishan | IP SAN router | $10m credit line | 12/12/2001 |
| Storigen | SAN cache | $15m | 12/12/2001 |
| Z-force | SAN switch | $16m | 12/13/2001 |
| Total Funding: | $125.5m | ||
Where there is significant customer pain, thats where the investment should go. [That pain] is still very evident in storage, says Jo Tango, a VC at Highland Capital Partners.
However, he notes that there is a major disconnect between the types of companies the VCs and entrepreneurs are creating and what end users will actually buy. Customers tell us that much of what is being developed today they wont need for several years. Case in point: 10-Gbit/s iSCSI chips, he says (see Siliquent Secures $10M for 10-Gig Silicon ).
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