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Lane15 Lines Up $12M: Page 2 of 3

“Lane15 is clearly one of the real players in InfiniBand,” says Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata Inc. He says that once InfiniBand systems ship -- the timing of which is certainly in question at this point -- Lane15's value will be in providing management for multiple vendors’ equipment.

Lane15 has delivered its software to hardware partners -- which include Dell, Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE: CPQ), InfiniSwitch Corp., and others -- and recently demonstrated its technology at the Intel Developers Forum (see Lane15 Manages Platforms).

Its primary competitor is seen as VIEO Inc., also based in Austin, whose backers include TL Ventures, BMC Software Inc., and Dell.

Nessler says the big differentiation between VIEO and Lane15 is that Lane15 is a software play. “That’s an advantage, because this market requires people to partner, and they’re going to want to partner with people they think aren’t going to compete with them."

The slower-than-anticipated rollout of InfiniBand can be partly attributed to the slowing economy, but it’s also because “InfiniBand is a big, complicated standard,” says Haff. The industry is crossing its fingers that the upfront work will help it avoid some of the early interoperability problems experienced by Fibre Channel.