Coackley, who was president and CEO of SAN Valley until that company was sold to Silicon Valley businessman Carl Berg in March, now holds the same titles at Saleen (see SAN Valley's Secret Sale). The company wasn't his idea, however: He was asked to join Saleen by two other former SAN Valley executives, Nael Atallah, its CTO and VP of architecture, and George Harris, VP of engineering. Atallah, who most recently worked for now-extinct Zambeel, had the original idea for the company (see Zambeel Znuffed Out).
But what exactly is the Saleen solution? Saleen is keeping its cards close to its chest, but Coackley reveals that the company is aiming to explode the traditional limits on the number of systems can be clustered together. "We're building what we call a third-generation clustered system software, [which] is intended to solve the scaleability problem," he says, adding, "Obviously there will be a limit at some very large number."
More importantly, perhaps, the software will supposedly allow administrators to manage entire Linux-based clusters as a single system, instead of on a per-node basis. "This is system software aimed at making clusters much more easy to manage than current technology," he says.
But there are plenty of established players in this market that will certainly prove to be tough competitors for Coackley & Co., if and when Saleen delivers a product. Companies offering server clustering or distributed file system software include Advanced Digital Information Corp. (Nasdaq: ADIC), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), PolyServe Inc., Qlusters, Sistina Software Inc., and Sanbolic Inc. (see Sistina Makes Inalienable Writes and PolyServe Musters Reliable Clusters). In addition, companies like Platform Computing offer similar products for grid systems.
Could there be room for another player? Saleen believes there is. The company -- citing "various industry sources," including Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) -- claims the market for clustered servers will grow from about $2.9 billion this year to between $30 billion and $40 billion within the next five years. "The research is not very good on clustering," admits Coackley. "But the good news is they're big numbers." [Ed. note: If you're gonna rely on dodgy research, you might as well make it a huge market forecast!]
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