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Opthos: SAN in Its Eyes: Page 2 of 4

Opthos was founded in March 2000 by Lundy, who hailed from amplifier startup Xtera Communications Inc., and Joe Parker, now CTO, who also worked at Xtera. Opthos made the most of its original funding, Lundy says, by managing to keep costs down and working with a minimum staff. The company still employs just 75 people.

Opthos began making noise, literally, at the Supercomm tradeshow in Atlanta this past June, hiring 10 or 12 picketers to chant and wave signs outside the convention center (see Is Opthos Over the Top? ). The display was aimed at attracting attendees to the Opthos booth, where a simulated network showed the vendor's IW1000 running with gear from Foundry Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: FDRY), Gotham Networks, LuxN Inc., and Metro-Optix Inc.

The exercise was partly meant to show that Opthos had a product designed to work with third-party metro DWDM gear. Opthos says the IW1000 will switch wavelengths between edge devices, such as SAN routers or switches, and DWDM systems in the core of the metro network -- that is, DWDM platforms situated within 4 kilometers of the central office or telco hotel.

This tack puts Opthos into competition not only with Movaz but with established players such as Ciena Corp. (Nasdaq: CIEN), Nortel Networks Corp. (NYSE/Toronto: NT), and ONI Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: ONIS), whose DWDM gear is also designed to link the metro core to edge devices.

Most of these existing players also have partnerships in place with SAN vendors. For example, Nortel reportedly has entered accounts with Computer Network Technology Corp. (CNT) (Nasdaq: CMNT), EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), and QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC), to name just a few.