ReiJane Huai, CEO, FalconStor

For FalconStor Software Inc. (Nasdaq: FALC) CEO and chairman ReiJane Huai, what seems to others to be a complicated task is really very simple.

In 2000, engineer Huai led a group of former Cheyenne Software executives in starting FalconStor, a company dedicated to network storage management and services. (See Virtualization Vendors Vie for OEMs.)

Following a merger with Network Peripherals, FalconStor went public and began shipping its IPStor software in 2001. (See FalconStor Completes Merger, Joins Nasdaq.) Since then, FalconStor has expanded its products to include practically every buzzword in storage software iSCSI, virtualization, virtual tape library (VTL), continuous data protection (CDP), and data de-duplication. (See FalconStor Supports iSCSI, FalconStor Delivers Next-Gen VTL, FalconStor Delivers CDP, and FalconStor Launches SIR.)

But Huai insists the company's mission is the same as it was at Cheyenne – to facilitate better backup. It's just that this time, the target is storage instead of servers.

Still, Huai admits backup is a "pretty big area." He says FalconStor tries to keep things simple by offering multiple services in one product family. To the customers, he says, it all comes down to making backups more efficient."Customers tell me, 'Rei, I need to improve the quality of my backup, the reliability and performance of my backup. I need to deploy recovery for Exchange. I need disaster recovery for Oracle. I do not care about the technology you're using.' "

Trying to cram so many technologies into one product line is challenging, though. While individual markets have sprung up around VTL, CDP, or data de-duplication, FalconStor is trying to play in all of them. Things are further complicated because FalconStor sells through channels. OEM partners EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) rebrand FalconStor's software.

Huai says things are certainly more complicated than they were when he was director of engineering at Cheyenne, and then GM of Asia for CA Inc. (NYSE: CA) after it acquired Cheyenne in 1996.

"This time around complexities are far greater than they were back then," he says. "Fifteen years ago, you built a solution for Netware or Windows. Now you're building a comprehensive solution for the network. There are many different applications, many different networks, many different protocols. Testing and interoperability alone is a huge task."

We recently spoke to Huai about these challenges, as well as FalconStor's technologies and how the Melville, N.Y.-based company can try to stay innovative in so many areas.Contents:

— Dave Raffo, News Editor, Byte and Switch

Next Page: All in One Space

Byte and Switch: There are storage companies that portray themselves as backup vendors or VTL vendors or CDP vendors. What's your approach?

Huai : We continue to play in one space, and that is called data protection.

Now, this is a pretty big area. We start with VTL. VTL helps customers who used to use third-party tape backup software. With VTL they can improve reliability and centralize management... A customer might also want to leverage disk to optimize recovery. For those customers, we offer CDP. That increases backup from once a day or once a night to many times throughout the day. You can recover a whole system from data failure.We continue to focus on various technologies that can recover different types of systems – Oracle, Exchange, whatever.

Many customers are trying to use backup software for tape backup. At the same time, we think our VTL technology will open up the next level of backup and recover, which is to leverage disk.

Byte and Switch: How do you think you stand out from other data protection vendors?

Huai : One product family – that's the key. That's how we differentiate. You would like to have iSCSI integrate with Fibre Channel, and have VTL compatible with a Fibre Channel system. The customer wants to spend minimal time integrating. IT managers are conservative in nature – they're always out there looking for the safest technology solution. They don't want to spend weeks and months putting solutions together.

Next Page: Whole SpectrumByte and Switch: You now offer VTL and CDP. How does a customer know which one to use? Do customers ever need both?

Huai : There's an overlap between snapshot-based recovery and tape recovery. If your system is so critical that you cannot miss a single write, we allow you to hit that granularity with CDP.

For backup and recovery, our customers use continuous capture and additional data protection snapshots on an hourly or daily basis. They always use their proven tape-based backup and recovery. That gives customers the whole spectrum.

Byte and Switch: Do customers ask specifically for CDP or VTL or virtualization?

Huai : Customers tell me, 'Rei, I need to improve the quality of my backup, the reliability and performance of my backup. I need to deploy recover for Exchange. I need disaster recovery for Oracle. I do not care about the technology you're using.'Byte and Switch: You recently announced Single Instance Repository, your de-duplication software. Other VTL vendors have also added de-dupe or announced plans to. Has it become mandatory for VTL? Where does this fit into your disk backup strategy?

Huai : Some VTL vendors are promoting the concept of redundant data elimination, but it is slow. We will introduce [data de-duplicaton] as modules, and they'll be well integrated and tested modules. They work in conjunction with our VTL system without slowing down the backups.

Byte and Switch: Where does virtualization fit in with your strategy?

Huai : Virtualization is a means to the end. VTL virtualizes the disk, it can work with anybody's storage. Our CDP can work with any storage... iSCSI, InfiniBand, or Fibre Channel. Virtualization is one of the important ingredients to our solution.

Byte and Switch: Many disk-based backup vendors predict the demise of tape. What's your opinion of the future of tape?Huai : Tape-based backup will exist for many years. At the same time, we offer customers who use our VTL technology the next level of backup and recovery, which is to leverage disk. We know backup very well. We continue to collaborate with tape backup vendors to make sure our products integrate with tape backup.

Not only can we live with tape, tape will be here for many years. Tape is good. We love tape. Tape is getting bigger, stronger all the time. Remember, 20 years ago people were predicting the death of mainframes? Mainframes are still growing.

Next Page: Shifting Paradigm