企業(yè)存儲類初創(chuàng)公司走紅

Thirty years ago, before software began “eating theworld,” much of the information in industry wasstored on spinning disks—those relatively slow butinexpensive devices reminiscent of record players. Ahandful of manufacturers competed in that business.The business of relational databases—the softwaretypically used to structure the data as they werestored—was largely dominated by Oracle.

30年前，也就是軟件還沒有“蠶食這個世界”的時候，大量的行業(yè)信息都被儲存在所謂的“旋轉式磁盤”之中。這種存儲速度相對較慢，但比較便宜的存儲設備，很容易讓人回憶起唱片機。在這個領域里競爭的制造商也為數不多。關系數據庫(也就是用來構建存儲數據的軟件)產業(yè)，當時基本上是甲骨文公司的天下。

Industry hummed along that way for many years. Then it all changed, quickly.

整個行業(yè)沿著這個方向發(fā)展了很多年，但很快一切都變了。

 

 

First, Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs refused to continue using spinning drives in the company’siPod portable music player, choosing instead lighter, more energy-efficient solid-state drives.Given the tremendous volumes of the iPod that were sold at the time, the decision helped drivea movement toward flash memory in consumer devices, says John Vrionis, a partner atLightspeed Venture Partners. Prices for flash began to fall dramatically. Large businesses andtheir data centers soon followed.

首先是蘋果已故CEO史蒂夫o喬布斯不愿繼續(xù)在iPod便攜式音樂播放器中使用旋轉式磁盤，轉而使用質量更輕，也更節(jié)能的固態(tài)硬盤。光速創(chuàng)投合伙人約翰o弗里奧尼斯指出，由于當時iPod的銷量極大，這項決定推動了閃存在消費電子設備中的使用。閃存的價格也開始顯著下降。各大企業(yè)和他們的數據中心也很快跟上了這一潮流。

“Flash performs like memory, which is 100 times faster than spinning disks, but it’s almost ascheap as disk,” Vrionis says. “You get all the performance benefits of memory, but it costsalmost the same as disk.”

弗里奧尼斯表示：“閃存的性能與內存相似，但它比旋轉式磁盤快100倍，而價格卻像硬盤一樣便宜。你可以既享受到內存的性能優(yōu)勢，同時享受到幾乎像硬盤一樣低廉的價格。”

Another contributing factor was a gigantic leap in the amount of data that average users wereaccessing on a given day, supported by the rapid rise of the Internet-connected mobile device.On a consumer level, anyone with a smartphone can relate to the trend; for businesses, thevolumes began to get so big as to fall into the territory now known as “big data.”

另外一個推動因素，則是普通用戶平均每天存取的數據量出現了巨大飛躍，而這主要歸功于聯網移動設備的快速興起。在消費者層面上，任何人只要有一部智能手機，都與這種趨勢相關。在企業(yè)界，數據量開始迅速增大，由此催生了一個現在被稱為“大數據”的新興領域。

A final factor was the storage industry’s move to software-defined storage, a kind ofstorage technique that uses cheap, distributed hardware (rather than massive, centralizedboxes) to scale with demand easily and inexpensively. “Just as you want to buy whatever PCyou want and then choose the operating system separately, people want to buy hardware andthen get the storage software separately,” Vrionis says.

最后一個因素是存儲行業(yè)開始轉向軟件定義存儲，這種存儲技術使用了廉價、分散的硬件(而不是集中的大型箱式機)實現了規(guī)模效益，可以輕易地并且低成本地滿足需求。弗里奧尼斯表示：“就像你可以買任何一臺你喜歡的電腦，然后再單獨選擇操作系統一樣，人們也想先買硬件，然后再單獨買存儲軟件。”

Put it all together, and what do you get? A storage market ripe for change and a boatload ofstartups vying to make it happen. “Huge tailwinds are giving all these startups a chance,”Vrionis says. “They’re unstoppable now.”

將所有這些趨勢聚集在一起，你能得到什么結論?那就是存儲市場已經發(fā)展到變革的邊緣，很多創(chuàng)業(yè)公司爭相使之發(fā)生。弗里奧尼斯認為：“一股巨大的推動力正在給予所有這些創(chuàng)業(yè)公司一個機會，他們現在幾乎是不可阻擋的。”

$1 billion per year

每年10億美元

Vrionis’s firm is just one of many that have been betting heavily on enterprise storagestartups—including contenders such as DataStax and PernixData, which recently drew freshfunding of $106 million and $35 million, respectively. (Vrionis himself serves on DataStax’sboard of directors.)

在企業(yè)存儲領域下了重注的風投還有很多，弗里奧尼斯的公司只是其中之一。在這個領域中競爭的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司有DataStax和PernixData等，這兩家公司最近剛剛分別拉到了1.06億美金和3500萬美元的投資。(弗里奧尼斯自己就是DataStax公司的董事會成員。)

A few other examples that have drawn investment attention in the past few months: PrimaryData, which took in $10 million in Series B funding in February; Tintri, which garnered $75million in Series E funding that same month; Pure Storage, which closed a $225 million Series Fround in April; Nutanix, with a $140 million Series E in August; Amplidata, with a $10 millionSeries E round in September; Formation Data Systems, with a $24.2 million Series A thatmonth; SolidFire, which closed an $82 million Series D round in October; SwiftStack, whose $16million Series B round also took place that month; IzumoBase, which raised $1.4 million inNovember; Kaminario, whose $53 million Series E took place earlier this month; andDataGravity, which this month closed a $50 million Series C round.

除此之外，還有幾家公司在過去幾個月也吸引了大量投資。比如Primary Data公司在二月的B輪融資中融得1000萬美元;Tintri公司也于二月在E輪融資中募得7500萬美元;Pure Storage公司四月在F輪融資中籌得2.25億美元;Nutanix公司在八月份的E輪融資中籌得1.4億美元;Amplidata公司在九月份的E輪融資中籌得1000萬美元;Formation Data Systems公司也于同月在A輪融資中籌得2420萬美元;SolidFire公司在十月份的D輪融資中籌得8200萬美元;SwiftStack公司在同月的B輪融資中籌得1600萬美元;IzumoBase公司在11月融資140萬美元;Kaminario公司在本月初的E輪融資中籌得5300萬美元;DataGravity公司剛剛在本月的C輪融資中籌得5000萬美元。

In all, disclosed investment in enterprise-storage startups has amounted to about a billiondollars per year in each of the last few years, says Simon Robinson, a research vice presidentfor storage and information management with 451 Research, which has been covering thespace since 2000.

451 Research公司自從2000年起就開始關注企業(yè)存儲領域，該公司的存儲與信息管理研究副總裁西蒙o羅賓遜指出，總體來看，在過去幾年里，向企業(yè)存儲類創(chuàng)業(yè)公司已披露的投資，基本上每年都能達到10億美元左右。

“You get these waves of startups,” Robinson says. “As soon as you think the industry is donewith storage, along comes another wave. It’s been a constant cycle of innovation in the lastdecade.”

羅賓遜表示：“這類初創(chuàng)公司層出不窮，你剛覺得行業(yè)的這一波存儲潮結束了，馬上就會迎來另一波。過去十年，這個領域基本上一直都處于創(chuàng)新期。”

Typically, those waves of innovation have each focused on a particular feature, spawningnumerous startups playing to a similar theme. “Some wouldn’t last; a couple would beacquired; one or two would do really well and go public,” Robinson says. “Then usually one ofthe big guys would step in and pay a substantial premium to acquire them.”

每一波的創(chuàng)新浪潮基本上都集中于某一特定功能，大量創(chuàng)業(yè)公司都在圍繞一個類似的主題。羅賓遜指出：“有些創(chuàng)業(yè)公司不會持久，有一些會被收購，有一兩家公司會做得非常出色，然后上市。然后某家大公司就會踏足進來，花高價收購它們。”

Data Domain, for instance, was acquired in 2009 by EMC EMC 1.00% , which snatched up Isilonthe following year. Hewlett-Packard HPQ -0.25% bought 3PAR in 2010; Dell acquired CompellentTechnologies in 2011. The list goes on.

比如Data Domain公司就于2009年被EMC公司收購，就在第二年，EMC又收購了一家名叫Isilon的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司。惠普(Hewlett-Packard)則于2010年買下了3PAR公司;戴爾(Dell)于2011年收購了CompellentTechnologies公司。類似的收購還有很多。

“The thing to bear in mind is that you have five or six big vendors, virtually nobody in middle,and then a whole bunch of startups,” Robinson says. “We haven’t seen a major change in thecast of characters in the last decade.”

羅賓遜指出：“需要注意的是，這個領域大約有五六家大廠商，基本上沒有人在中游，然后就是一大堆創(chuàng)業(yè)公司。在過去10年里，這張‘演員表’基本上沒怎么大變。”

Dave Wright, SolidFire‘s founder and CEO, says his company grew 700% year over year in 2013and 50% quarter over quarter this year. He attributes much of that to two “huge waves ofchange” affecting the industry.

SolidFire公司創(chuàng)始人兼CEO戴夫o萊特表示，他的公司2013年的年增率達到700%，而每個季度都比上一季度增長50%。他認為，這主要歸功于影響行業(yè)的兩個“重大的變革浪潮”。

The shift to flash and solid-state storage is one of those. “That’s very disruptive—a hugechunk of the storage market is going to move to flash over the next few years,” he says. (SolidFire offers all-flash systems with a focus on scale-out storage for data centers.)

首先是向閃存和固態(tài)硬盤的轉變。他表示：“它非常有顛覆性，在未來幾年，存儲市場將有相當一部分向閃存轉型。”(SolidFire主要提供全閃存系統，同時重點提供數據中心的擴展存儲。)

At the same time, though, Wright downplays that trend as “a fairly short-term disruptiveshift—everybody is doing that,” he says.

不過與此同時，萊特也看低這股趨勢，認為它只是“一種較為短期的顛覆式轉型——人人都在做它。”

More interesting from Wright’s perspective is a second major shift: the transition withinenterprises from traditional, so-called siloed data infrastructures to cloud-based ones. It’s achange that is affecting the entire industry, but one that “a lot of other startups in the storagespace are not really attuned to,” he says. ‘That’s what we think is going to make us moresuccessful in the long term: SolidFire is the only infrastructure purpose-built for this wave ofcloud.”

從萊特的觀點看，更有意思的則是第二個重大轉型，也就是企業(yè)從傳統的所謂孤立式數據架構向云架構的轉變。這種轉變正在影響整個行業(yè)，但是“很多存儲類創(chuàng)業(yè)公司并沒有真正適應這種轉變。”他還表示：“這就是我們?yōu)槭裁凑J為我們在長期會更加成功，因為SolidFire是目前唯一專門為云計算浪潮構建的專用架構。”

‘Looking for simplicity’

尋找簡單性

Part of the challenge for storage startups today is to simplify what has become aninordinately complex and fragmented landscape, Robinson says. It’s the result of a lot offeature-focused research and development over the last decade.

羅賓遜認為，如今存儲類創(chuàng)業(yè)公司面臨的挑戰(zhàn)之一，是要簡化過去那種非常復雜和碎片化的格局。它正是過去十年很多以功能為重點的研發(fā)所造成的結果。

“Big companies have lots of storage systems, each of which serves a particular purpose,” hesays. “The challenge that organizations are having now is not just the data growth, butmanaging that environment, which may consist of seven or eight storage silos with hugecomplexity.”

他表示：“大公司有很多存儲系統，其中每個系統都服務于一個特定的用途。企業(yè)所面臨的挑戰(zhàn)不僅僅是數據量的增長，還有如何管理這種環(huán)境，因為這些系統可能包括了七八個獨立的存儲系統，極其復雜。”

Simplicity is a new goal, in other words. The trend has led to an industry preference for moreall-encompassing approaches. “Converged” (which combines storage and compute in a singledevice) and “hyper-converged” (which combines storage, compute, networking, andvirtualization in a single device) models reflect the shift. Robinson points to Nutanix andFormation Data Systems as notable contenders.

換句話說，簡單性是一個新的目標。這種趨勢使得整個行業(yè)開始青睞那些“萬金油”式的方案。所謂的“融合”模式(將存儲和計算整合到一臺設備上)和“高度融度”模式(將存儲、計算、網絡和虛擬化整合到同一臺設備上)的流行也反映了這種轉變。羅賓遜指出，Nutanix和Formation Data Systems公司是這方面的兩個值得注意的競爭者。

Meanwhile, the flood of apps—internal and customer-facing, and often mobile—continuesunabated, increasing pressure on businesses to achieve better performance and speed fromthe databases and storage systems that underpin those applications.

與此同時，應用軟件的熱潮(包括內部應用、面向顧客的應用，往往還有移動應用)依然沒有減退，這也加大了企業(yè)的壓力，迫使它們不得不提高數據庫和存儲系統的性能和速度。

“Every second of latency can cost you 10 percent of conversions, and it’s getting worse onmobile, where the network has its own built-in latency,” says Matt Murphy, a general partnerat Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. (KPCB invested in both DataStax and PernixData;Murphy serves on PernixData’s board.) “If you can cut off a second or half a second, there’smillions or hundred of millions of dollars in opportunity there in play. At all layers—storage,compute, network—everyone is trying to figure out how to get that extra edge.”

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers公司(該公司是DataStax和PernixData公司的投資方，其合伙人墨菲也是PernixData的董事會成員)的合伙人馬特o墨菲指出：“每一秒鐘的延遲都可能讓你損失10%的客戶，在移動端則更嚴重，因為移動網絡本來就有延遲。如果你可以把延遲減少一秒或半秒，就擁有了可能賺幾百萬甚至上億美元的機會。在存儲、計算和網絡等所有層面上，每家公司都在想方設法地獲得這種額外優(yōu)勢。”

The question is which technologies and vendors will best deliver that edge. Lightspeed’sVrioniscontends that newcomers to the scene have an advantage over incumbents, which are still“staring at yesterday’s problems and not able to take a blank sheet of canvas.” (One of thoseincumbents, Oracle, did not respond to Fortune‘s request for comment.)

現在的問題是：哪些技術和哪些廠商能夠最好地將這種優(yōu)勢帶給客戶?光速創(chuàng)投公司的弗里奧尼斯也認為，這個領域的新進者其實比守成者更有優(yōu)勢，因為“守成者們仍然盯著昨天的問題，不能毅然揚帆前進。”(其中的一個“守成者”甲骨文公司并沒有回復《財富》的評論請求。)

Henry Baltazar, a senior analyst with Forrester Research, agrees. “The big guys are finallycatching up, but they left the door open for too long,” he says. “Now it’s a battle.”

福雷斯特研究公司的高級分析師亨利o巴爾塔扎爾也表示：“大公司最終會趕上來，但是他們給創(chuàng)業(yè)公司留了太長時間的空子?，F在，戰(zhàn)爭開始了。”(財富中文網)