Sierra Logic Ships SATA

The investors who poured $32.5 million into Sierra Logic Inc. from 2001 to 2003 bet heavily that low-cost SATA drives would make it big in storage (see Sierra Logic Secures $12M). Thats not much of a gamble today as nearly all the major storage vendors are shipping SATA systems.

Sierra Logic's challenge now will be to stand out in the crowd that's forming around SATA technology. The Roseville, Calif.-based startup appears to be off to a good start with two announced OEM deals for its first product (see Sierra Logic Ships Storage Router).

Dot Hill Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: HILL) and Xyratex Ltd. (Nasdaq: XRTX) are starting to ship the product Sierra Logic calls a Silicon Storage Router. The router is actually a chip that sits between SATA drives and a RAID controller and provides Fibre Channel features such as scaleable routing and full-path redundancy.

Dot Hill uses Sierra Logic’s routers in the SANnet II storage systems that Sun rebrands as its StorEdge 3511 low-end SAN systems (see BT Boasts of Compliance). Xyratex ships Sierra Logic’s router in its FC-SATA expansion JBOD system (see Xyratex Ships SATA Expansion).

Sierra Logic CEO Bob Whitson says four more OEM deals are in the works with system vendors, and he expects $7 million in revenue this quarter. Whitson forecasts Sierra Logic will turn a profit by the middle of 2005.