By Dave Simpson
January 24, 2008—Although it has being doing business in the US for some time, Open-E GmbH this week launched the Open-E Inc. subsidiary in the US, with offices in Redwood City, CA, and Boston, and is in the process of adding VARs in the US. The Germany-based company makes NAS and iSCSI software and competes with pure-play software vendors such as FalconStor, Microsoft, and Wasabi, as well as with iSCSI/NAS vendors such as EMC, LeftHand Networks, Network Appliance, and others.
Open-E is hoping to capitalize on the growing NAS and iSCSI markets. For example, International Data Corp. (IDC) predicts a 75.8% increase in iSCSI revenue between 2005 and 2010. IDC also predicts that iSCSI revenue will top $5 billion, or 20% of the external disk storage market, in 2010—up from $305 million, or 3% of the external disk market, in 2005.
Open-E, which sells primarily through the channel, claims to have more than 8,000 customers for its Data Storage Server (DSS) software products, about 70% of which are in Europe (with 40% in Germany), 20% in the US, and 10% in other regions, according to Krzysztof Franek, Open-E's president and CEO. Sales are split at about 85% to the channel (VARs and distributors) and 15% to OEMs and direct to end users. OEMs include vendors such as Digi-Data and Rorke Data.
In addition to iSCSI, Open-E's software supports Gigabit Ethernet and 10GbE, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand.
The company hopes to differentiate its software in the areas of performance and hardware compatibility, citing compatibility with products from vendors such as Adaptec, AMCC, Areca, ASI, Asus, Atto, Broadcom, Celeros, Chelsio, D-Link, Emulex, HighPoint, ICP Vortex, Intel, LSI, Marvel, Nvidia, Promise, QLogic, Rorke Data, SiS, Supermicro, Tekram, Tyan, Xyratex, and 3Com.
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