Isn't TrueSAN, which has just 35 employees, afraid to challenge vendors like EMC, which has thousands? No, says Isakovich. "There's room for everyone. Look at how Alteon and Juniper went up against Cisco, Nortel, and Lucent. They succeeded by leveraging technology, early advantage, and engineering talent. And certainly Cisco didn't go out of business."
TrueSAN has another ace in the hole: It's cut an unusual support deal with IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), by which that vendor's Global Services arm will service TrueSAN accounts. "It was time-consuming to put this agreement in place, but it's going to be worth it," Isakovich says. "It means that if someone wants a SAN anywhere in the world, we can help deliver it." Also, he says, the deal with IBM gives TrueSAN the means to live up to a higher level of support than it otherwise could.
Whether TrueSAN succeeds in its mission remains to be seen. But at least one other startup has similar plans, confirming the attractiveness of the proposition. Cereva Networks Inc. is still in stealth mode and unwilling to talk much about its doings, although it acknowledges that it's on the verge of releasing its first product. Analysts and VCs confirm that this is a switch/server similar to the one TrueSAN has launched. (Jeff McCarthy, general partner at North Bridge, spilled some of the beans to Light Reading back in July: see Cereva ).
Cereva's got other things in common with TrueSAN. It's rumored to be going for more funding, after having gotten $66.5 million in funding from a slew of leading VCs, including Goldman Sachs & Co. (NYSE: GS), North Bridge Venture Partners, and Worldview Technology Partners. And the vendor acknowledges it will probably try to go public sometime next year.
Unlike TrueSAN, however, Cereva seems chary about competitors, citing them as a reason for its cagey approach to everything from press announcements to its Website, which was only recently revised from an extremely minimalist state that one company spokesperson said "helped make sure our competitors didn't take us too seriously."
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