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Storigen Clinches $15M in Funding: Page 2 of 4

Hoffman's happy to outline what his product isn’t: Storigen's server isn't a fixed-function Web caching appliance like gear from CacheFlow Inc. (Nasdaq: CFLO) or Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP). And Storigen is not building a massive network-attached storage (NAS) box for the data center à la Surgient Networks (see Cisco Surges 'Round Surgient).

“It’s not just another scaleable NAS appliance or NetApp or EMC Corp. [NYSE: EMC] competitor,” Hoffman says. Also, he says it won’t "exactly" use iSCSI (SCSI over IP), an emerging standard for network storage, but it is “definitely [based on] a form of iSCSI.” Clear as mud, you say?

Another startup, Seattle-based Isilon Systems, is developing a distributed storage system (see Isilon Snags $8.4M). But Hoffman says unlike Isilon, which is focusing on distributing streaming media content, Storigen will cover a broad range of applications and hopes to line up partnerships with enterprise software vendors in the coming year.

Initially, Storigen was aiming its system at service storage providers (SSPs) (see Storigen: Echoes of Akamai). But since many SSPs have gone belly-up or have discarded their original business plans in recent months, Storigen has repositioned the product as a scaleable storage offering for either enterprise or service provider customers in general.

Jamie Gruener, senior storage analyst at The Yankee Group, says Storigen is repositioning itself to best attack shifting market conditions.