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JNI Corporation, a provider of enterprise storage connectivity products, has signed an exclusive liscensing agreement with Troika Networks, a provider of storage infrastructure products.
JNI said it has licensed the exclusive rights to Troika ‘s Fibre Channel software and hardware products that provide high availability storage area network (SAN) solutions for enterprise class servers running under Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Solaris operating systems.
According to the companies, the licensing and royalty agreement provides JNI with an exclusive source code license to Troika ‘s Path Command Plus software that provides high availability features for both host and target devices through host bus adapters in Fibre Channel SANs. Additionally JNI also acquired exclusive distribution rights for Troika ‘s Zentai family of controllers for use as SCSI-to-Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs). JNI said it would take over all sales and support of current Zentai HBAs and Path Command Plus software currently available today. Troika, for its part, said it will focus efforts on its recently announced fabric-based storage services platform technology. In addition JNI plans to migrate Path Command Plus to JNI’s FibreStar family of 2 Gb Ready Fibre Channel HBAs.
“JNI is the best choice to support and enhance Troika’s innovative technology into mission-critical applications in the open data center,” said Alan Skidmore, president and CEO of Troika Networks. “JNI’s experience in these environments, their reputation as a quality leader and their high penetration of the types of data centers that require the Path Command Plus high availability product family is a perfect fit. This will also allow Troika to focus on new products based on our recently-announced storage services platform technology.”
“This is an exceptionally good agreement for both companies as well as the customer,” said Eric Sheppard, senior analyst, IDC. “JNI will get a product that is important to their core market in the high-end data center; Troika can focus its energies on its fabric-based storage services platform technology; and current and potential customers benefit from JNI’s larger size and market presence.”
The companies said the Path Command Plus software, currently running on the Zentai HBAs, is certified by a number of major SAN vendors in Windows environments, including Hitachi Data Systems 9900 and 9200 storage solutions environments; Microsoft Windows 2000 certifications for single user, multi-user and clustered server environments; Brocade Fabric Aware programs for its switches, and Veritas software. The Zentai HBAs running Path Command Plus have also received Solaris Ready certification from Sun Microsystems for Solaris environments.
