Storm LLC, a Pittsburgh-based web start-up, has won Sun Microsystems Inc co-founder Andreas Bechtolsheim as its latest investor. Bechtolsheim has taken an equity stake of an undisclosed size in the company, and joins other technology industry heavyweights who are taking an active role in Storm. They include Ken Lang, former CTO of Lycos Inc, Jeff Rothschild, co-founder of Veritas Corp and Mpath Interactive Inc, public relations man Regis McKenna, technical author Rajeev Nagur, and William Scherlis, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s IT Center.
Storm launched its first product, PageStorm, at the end of last month. Using dynamic memory management and fast file access technologies the company has developed in-house, PageStorm speeds up the rate at which Windows NT-based web servers access files, and also reduces server latency. It’s currently being deployed on several heavily trafficked web sites. Storm says its technology, for which its has patents pending, can boost web server performance by tens to hundreds of percentage points depending on the applications and environment. It claims addressing server performance is the first link in the information delivery chain, and that it complements existing approaches to boosting web performance, such as load-balancing systems, caching appliances, the addition of hardware, and content delivery services.
The heavyweights will help Storm determine future direction as it deploys its core kernel-level technology in new application specific versions. The current version operates as a transparent, drop-in application on Windows NT.
Bechtolsheim’s other investments include Internet search engine company Google Inc, network attached storage firm Creative Design Solutions Inc (recently acquired by Maxtor Corp), fibre channel switch maker Brocade Communications Systems Inc, Unix mail server company Sendmail Inc, and gigabit-speed networking company G2 Networks Inc. He also set up high-speed networking switching firm Granite Systems Inc, acquired by Cisco Systems Inc in 1996.
