Exanet is one of those crazy Israeli tech companies that never figured out sales and marketing. They are a classic example of all that I’ve ranted about lately in this area. They have some good distributed file system technology – or had anyhow (I’m not sure how it stacks up in the current environment, I stopped paying attention to them a while ago to be fair). Michael paid for them with the change in his ash tray ($12M – a truckload less then they had invested in them). I’m not sure exactly what they want with it, but I can speculate.
I see a few angles to pay attention to. First, I don’t think Dell’s plan is to build a mega internally developed set of IP based on Exanet, but you never know. I think Ibrix was a better play, and told Dell so, but who listens? HP is, in fact, rebuilding their entire array of NAS offerings around Ibrix, so perhaps Dell is thinking the same way. Or it could just be that they have some interesting patents or IP.
The Exanet stuff was always geared toward mega throughput apps such as rich media. Ibrix is much more mainstream in that it supported random access, smaller I/O such that it can be used in the “real” world. I’m not sure if Exanet can be tweaked to be a mainstream NAS file system, but history tells me probably not. That’s why I’d be surprised if Exanet became the basis of a high-volume NAS play.
Dell does need a real scale-out NAS play, in my opinion. They are doing well in the market with their efficiency story and have made great strides to “sell the portfolio” to customers. They have a great story with EqualLogic, EMC, and their own lower-end block gear, but a Windows NAS offering is sooooo 1980’s. They need to have a scale-out file play the way they have a scale-out block play. Perhaps Exanet gets them in the conversation. If HP has LeftHand and Ibrix, IBM has SONAS and XIV, then Dell needs to add something to EqualLogic for balance.
I’m not sure what the grand plan is, or even if there was one. It didn’t cost them anything really, so I’m fine with the buy if for no other reason than it’s yet another small step toward internalizing some IP. Everyone knows what they did with EqualLogic, but the smaller steps have been just as important. The stuff they did on server management (embedding a ton of functionality) is awesome, for example. In a world where Intel is the maker of the commodity, little things like that can have a huge impact on a company’s success. Maybe they can rip something smart out of Exanet that gives them that type of nondescript advantage in other areas.
Or, maybe Michael wanted a good salted fish recipe.
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