Xyratex is one of the main suppliers of drive array subsystems, with IBM XIV, Dell EqualLogic, EMC DataDomain, and NetApp among its customers. It's developing a new product and the likelihood is that the design has been checked out with its OEM customers (above) some of whom will be shipping it.

The product is a big array. Xyratex CEO Steve Barber talked about it in a recent quarterly earnings call with analysts.

He said it will be a big data platform in a market where the minimum installed capacity is 1PB and good performance is needed. There also needs to be scalable management software which can store data in the array efficiently.

Xyratex anticipates the software becoming available next year.