GreenBytes guts its arrays, turns self into chompable doughnut
Plus they've scooped up an ex-IBM dude for the board
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Once upon a time there were two suppliers with VDI-focussed storage arrays: GreenBytes,with an all-flash array; and Tintri, with a hybrid flash/disk array technology. Now GreenBytes has become a software-only business. Why?
The reasoning, outlined by GreenBytes' CEO and chairman Stephen O'Donnell, is that over time mid-market customers will go to the cloud for their compute and storage, while enterprise customers will increasingly prefer to buy converged systems from OEMs.
GreenBytes is nurturing its MSP (Managed Service Provider) and OEM relationships as a result. You can still buy hardware through GreenBytes but you end up on a Dell site. There is little profit in supplying systems using commodity-based hardware, GreenBytes is saying, when your primary IP is software-based.
So take out the hardware from the middle, so to speak, of your systems, leaving a tasty software doughnut ring behind.
The company has appointed former IBM exec Barry Rudolph to its industry advisory board. O'Donnell said of Rudolph's appointment: "His extraordinary accomplishments at IBM, vast storage industry expertise, and deep understanding of how OEMs operate will be invaluable as GreenBytes continues to grow. We’re particularly excited to have Barry’s insights as we refine our business strategy and expand efforts around the OEM channel.”
The other advisory board members are:
- Randy Chalfant, former CTO, Sun Microsystems
- Ed Haletky, President, CEO and principal consultant, AstroArch Consulting; founder and managing director, The Virtualization Practice LLC
- Bruce Kornfeld, former Dell and Compellent executive
- Mike Miracle, senior veep marketing and strategy, BlackRidge Technology; former CMO and SVP, SevOne
- Ben Woo, Founder and Managing Director, Neuralytix; former program veep of IDC’s Worldwide Storage Systems Research
Our understanding from GreenBytes is that it reckons it has probably the best deduplication engine on the market, bar none, and this helps it store virtual desktop images more efficiently than anyone else. It will be interesting to see if GreenBytes applies its dedupe technology to other use cases alongside VDI. Perhaps discussions with actual and potential OEMS will reveal opportunities for development? ®
