iVivity Chalks Up $10M More

Chip startup iVivity picked up another $10 million in funding today and unveiled a shiny new CEO as it looks to bolster its portfolio of OEM partners and introduce new 10-Gbit/s technology.

The round, which included existing investors Grotech Capital Group, Cordova Ventures, H.I.G. Ventures, JK&B Capital, Kinetic Ventures, and Mellon Ventures, brings the Atlanta-based vendor's total funding to around $60 million. Today's funding is an extension of the vendor's $26 million C round from 2004. (See IVivity Ingests $26M.)

The latest cash influx will be used to boost iVivity's partner efforts around its iDiSX chip and HBA technology, including the 10-Gbit/s HBA it announced earlier this year. (See iVivity Unveils 10-Gig HBA and IVivity Rolls 10-GigE HBA.)

"We're building up a support infrastructure, and adding to our software development team in India and here in Atlanta," explains Martin Mainini, iVivity's director of marketing. He was unable to say how many people might be added to the firm's 65-strong workforce.

After clinching the latest round of funding, iVivity's CEO David Coombs has also decided to step down to "pursue his personal interests," according to Mainini. Coombs, the former vice president of operations at HDS, joined the company back in 2003.The outgoing CEO's replacement is Tom Burniece, former senior vice president of marketing and business development at Copan Systems, who joins the firm after a stint as an independent consultant in Silicon Valley. Burniece is not a total newcomer -- the exec has served on iVivity's board since the company was founded in 2000.

Much of Burniece's time is likely to be spent finding new OEM partners, and maintaining existing relationships. iVivity has already clinched OEM deals with Crossroads Systems and Huawei-3Com, as well as two more "unannounced" deals, which Mainini hopes to reveal at next month's Storage Networking World conference.

So far, the startup has racked up seven "design wins" for its technology, although only one of these, a chip deployment in a Crossroads bridge/router, has been publicly announced. Mainini would not reveal specific details of the vendor's relationship with Huawei-3Com, saying only that the partner will be releasing products built around iVivity technology shortly.

Last month Huawei-3Com revealed some details of its plans to integrate iVivitys 1-Gbit/s and 10-Gbit/s iDiSX chips into its storage and networking products. (See H3C Picks IVivity Chips and Huawei Sets Sights on IP SANs.)

But, at least in the HBA space, iVivity is playing catch-up to its rival Neterion, which names Cray, HP, IBM, and SGI as partners that use the adapter in their own server infrastructures. (See Neterion Lines Up Partners, Neterion, IBM Ink Deal , and S2io Becomes Neterion.)So far, only one of iVivity's OEM deals -- with one of its two unannounced partners -- involves its HBA technology. Mainini, however, says that iVivity plans to enhance the HBA.

At the moment, the adapter supports the iSCSI, TCPIP, and UDP protocols, as well as PCI-X, although Mainini told Byte & Switch that PCI-E and Fiber Channel will soon be added to this mix. "Our new products are in development and are targeted for release in late 2006 and early 2007," he explains. "Some of the money [announced today] is earmarked for the next-generation of our silicon."

The firm plans to reach profitability sometime in 2007, although Mainini says that iVivity is unlikely to join the small, but growing, band of storage IPOs anytime soon. (See Riverbed Hedges IPO Bet, CommVault's Taking the Plunge, and Double-Take Seeks IPO.)

"At this point in time, with market dynamics, going public would not be an attractive option," he says. "The trend now, for organizations of our size, is not to go public," he adds, explaining that compliance pressures are making IPOs increasingly difficult.

Despite some reticence from users, Mainini also claims that demand for 10-Gbit/s technology is starting to ramp up. (See 10G Supply Exceeds Demand.) "We're seeing traction in data centers that is being driven by aggregation of 1 Gbit/s," he says. "It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when, for 10-Gbit/s."— James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch