Market Research

Optimize without Compromise; Here Comes Storwize

Storwize has over 100 customers in the Global 5000. In addition to Shopzilla, there’s Chevron, Polycom, Mazda and Allianz and a bunch of other household names that aren’t public. Storwize has a bagful of patents ~35 either approved or pending with some pretty interesting secret sauce, solving a challenging problem; namely compressing primary storage without sacrificing performance.

"Storwize CEO, Ed Walsh stopped by the Wikibon offices the other day with his new VP of technology strategy Steve Kenniston packing a new pitch. Wikibon got an early look and we were definitely impressed. I first learned about Storwize in late 2008 and then mid last year we had Burzin Engineer of Shopzilla on a Peer Incite along with several other practitioners, speaking about in-line data compression for primary storage. "What I didn’t grasp until just recently was the potential that Storwize has as a company. Frankly I was surprised at how well Storwize had been keeping its secrets. I think Walsh and company have plans to change all that. For those who haven’t been following storage closely over the past few years, Walsh was the CEO of Avamar and then Virtual Iron. He has a track record of sniffing out firms with valuable IP in white hot markets, building organizational structures, growing a business and then selling it to deep-pocketed firms like EMC and Oracle. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves– there’s still plenty of work to be done here."