SilverStorm Gathers Cash

Another sign that InfiniBand could yet become a hot technology: SilverStorm Technologies, a startup often overlooked in the InfiniBand space, picked up $13 million today in the first significant storage funding of the year. (See SilverStorm Grabs $13M.)

CEO Russ Hawkins says the startup will use a good chunk of the money to beef up marketing -- a good idea, considering SilverStorms low name recognition compared to rivals such as Cisco and even fellow startup Voltaire.

Perhaps the poor name recognition is because SilverStorm was known as InfiniCon before its renaming last May. The name change reflected SilverStorm’s attempt to move beyond InfiniBand, a technology then still largely the domain of high performance computing (HPC).

But that was also around the time Cisco was wrapping up its $250 million purchase of SilverStorm rival Topspin, in one of the reasons often cited for InfiniBand’s bit of a resurgence in late 2005. (See Cisco Takes On Topspin and InfiniBand Gets Second Looks.) Engenio and DataDirect Networks have since rolled out native InfiniBand systems, and InfiniBand’s clustering capabilities make it a good fit for the emergence of clustered computing. (See Cluster Clamor and InfiniBand Natives Stirring.)

Although his company’s new name isn’t as closely linked with InfiniBand anymore, Hawkins says he’s bullish on the technology. But SilverStorm hasn’t abandoned plans to move into other high speed interconnect products when the time is right.