Violin Memory in SECRET $2bn FLOAT PLAN, whisper snitches Flash array start-up Violin Memory has filed for an initial public offering* worth up to $2bn, according to Bloomberg, which quoted two undisclosed sources. The report says three banks are involved: JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, and Bank America Corp. Violin Memory is led by CEO Don Basile, formerly the CEO of Fusion-io, …
You couldn't be more wrong. They were one of the first to market with a new(ish) disruptive proposition, had a small window of opportunity during which they made hay and now they find life getting much much harder. EMC, IBM and alike have bought similar, but better value companies, Violin have lost some of their best guys already who stayed less than a year, and their value proposition has been surpassed by a number of other similar companies as well. They are looking too expensive to buy (as a company) relative to other options, and are now finding themselves marginalised. I predict very tough times ahead.
But they taste different...
The big difference between the two, is that the Violin represembles a more "Complete Array" with features like de-duplication, compression, thin provisioning, clones/snapshots, remote replication and controller redundancy.
Where as the TMS RamSAN, the beast that they are, is more akin to a big, fast flash drive without the extra features. It doesn't have remote replication, compression, dedupe etc. (it needs somthing like NetApp v-series or SVC in front of it to get those features, and even then there isn't the N+1/HA controller function).
Yes, similar media, similar purpose, but different capabilities.
No, I'm not affiliated with either of them outside of implementation involvement, I don't get any kickbacks from them either - though I wouldn't say no.
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