Troika Networks has raised $13 million to help the company market its network-based storage services platform.
Services like backup, snapshots, and replication, which have traditionally been deployed in every system in a network or within storage arrays, can instead be run within the SAN, Troika says. By centralizing management and control of services, companies can simplify the management burden and increase the effectiveness of their administrators.
Troika says its Network Storage Services Platform (NSS Platform) combines the flexibility of appliances with the speed and robustness of a switch to provide an optimal platform for deploying storage applications in the network.
The NSS Platform “promises to be one of the most attractive ways to add intelligence to the SAN,” asserts Troika. The platform “provides a very simple deployment model for storage applications, such as volume management, migration, mirroring, snapshots, copy services, and asynchronous replication.”
“The appliance approach to adding intelligence to the storage network is easy but adds latency,” observes Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst
at the Enterprise Storage Group. “The switch-based approach kills the latency problems but will take a long time to develop. NSS Platform players like Troika give users the best of both worlds — easy to implement and really, really fast.”
Anthem Ventures Partners led the $13 million round, which included previous investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Dynafund Ventures, and Windward Ventures, as well as new investor Hamilton Apex Technology Ventures.
Troika claims its platform lets customers move business critical applications into the network without disruption. The platform is complementary to existing Fibre Channel fabrics and is compatible with storage area networks regardless of the choice of SAN switches, so customers do not need to replace their switches, disturb their infrastructure, or deal with complex driver compatibility issues in order to add new capabilities with wire speed performance. Multiple disparate applications can be hosted on a single NSS Platform simultaneously, reducing management burden, cost, and complexity, according to the company.
“Troika’s mission is to simplify the adoption of SAN-based storage services, both for customers and for solution providers,” states Troika President and CEO Bill Terrell. “Troika’s platform offers the ability to add services by simply adding and managing a single device. As customers become comfortable with multiple SAN-based applications, they will be able to host these simultaneously on a single platform. Troika’s appliance-like development environment based on a standard operating system is the easiest and fastest way for ISVs and system providers to bring new applications and new features to market.”
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