Acopia Wins Leading Lights Award

Acopia Networks Inc. was recognized by Light Reading, this site's parent publication, at the first annual Leading Lights Awards Dinner last night (see LR Reveals Leading Lights Winners).

Acopia's Adaptive Resource Switching (ARX) appliance was among 11 recipients of the awards, which were culled from more than 325 awards entries by 15 editors and analysts from Light Reading's network of Websites and research products.

The startup was cited for "Best New Product, Private Company," which, according to the judges, is "a market-leading product that, through engineering and technical excellence, best enables the deployment of profitable next-generation telecommunications services."

The ARX is designed to sit between a NAS filer and clients in an Ethernet LAN, allowing customers to centralize control and access to a range of geographically dispersed storage gear.

A key feature of the ARX is the combination of virtualization with a native global namespace that gives attached servers a common filing system, a way to pool data from multiple devices as though it were in one place. This approach provides centralized management of storage without disrupting storage setups already in place.So far, Acopia boasts two big customers, Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. and Warner Music Group. And, word has it, Acopia has another dozen customers in the process of buying its wares.

With a new $25 million and a roster of 90 employees, Acopia's in an enviable position (see Acopia Aces $25M and Acopia Ships Its Switch). What's not enviable is the target on its back. Competition is building from big vendors and small. Indeed, Acopia was late to the party compared with a couple of similar startups, including NuView Inc. and Rainfinity. Those rivals have agreements with Network Appliance Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP) to boot.

Clearly, Acopia's got its work cut out. But so far, it appears to be gaining mindshare as an innovator in the ongoing battle to streamline enterprise storage.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch