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Hopeful hybrideer Reduxio grabs more cash for disk+flash

Company aims to leapfrog existing hybrid vendors

A late-coming hybrid flash/disk array startup, Reduxio, has acquired $15m in additional funding to build a better box.

Three hybrid array companies are going gang-busters. Post-IPO Nimble Storage and pre-IPO Tegile and Tintri are all growing at triple-digit rates, as they tear into the mainstream array suppliers' customer bases.

They offer faster and cheaper arrays, near SSD performance at disk-level prices, with products that are easier to manage and better suited to supporting virtualised servers.

So, now is not the time to come with a new new hybrid array design, you would think, yet Reduxio is doing just that, and its backers, now including Seagate and Intel Capital, are convinced it has what it takes to be successful. They and others have given Reduxio $15m in a B-round of funding, following on from last year's $9m A-round.

We've characterised the A-round as build-us-a-prototype product, and the B-round as a build-an—infrastructure-to-sell-the-product round.

The $15m will be used to “accelerate Reduxio's product development and support its go-to-market plan”.

Its technology has a focus on cloud, virtualisation and structured data sets, and the firm claims it will provide “breakthrough cost and capacity savings”.

It features:

  • flash-centric architecture
  • tier-X active tiering across multiple tiers using smart placement algorithms
  • block-based NoDup in-line deduplication and in-line compression — which discards redundant data before it gets written
  • time-based cloning and
  • backDating for infinite "to the second" data recovery – claimed to obsolete snapshots.

Reduxio describes itself as "the next-generation hyper-efficient hybrid storage innovator", and it's said to have an architecture that can use disk drives, SSDs and future non-volatile technologies in a single system.

“We believe that systems that successfully integrate multiple media types can deliver compelling price/performance and reliability benefits and will have a unique position in the market," said Rocky Pimentel, head of global markets and customers at Seagate.

This is a big ask, so to speak. All the major array suppliers have hybridised their arrays, with existing data management services available. Customers that don't like them can buy alternatives from Nimble, Tegile and Tintri, also SanDisk (through its Fusion-io purchase). That's at least 10 suppliers, four of whom have new-architecture systems and not retrofitted legacy arrays.

Yet Seagate, Intel Capital, and the A-round investors think Reduxio has something good enough to knock these 10 off their collective perch, something that “will redefine price/performance and functionality for enterprise storage buyers".

The backers must also calculate that existing suppliers can't refresh their tech to match Reduxio’s cost-dropping and functionality-lifting potential.

The announcement says nothing about server-side storage – from which we surmise the Reduxio product will be a networked storage box.

Seagate, which led the B-round, gets to sit on the Reduxio board and watch how its money is going to be spent. Initial product availability is scheduled for later this year. ®

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