A deal with Expand Networks will see the Florida-based WAN optimization and application acceleration vendor integrate DiskSites’ VBranch technology into its portfolio of offerings.
A second deal with Oki Network Integration (OkiNet), the integration arm of Japanese conglomerate Oki Electric Industry, will see OkiNet bundle the software onto its RASE range of appliances, with localization carried out by DiskSites’ master distributor for Japan, Macnica Networks.
While the OkiNet deal gives DiskSites an enhanced route to market in Japan, the Expand relationship embeds its WAFS technology into a broader offering alongside WAN optimization and app acceleration.
As such, it puts the Expand/DiskSites partnership on equal footing, in terms of the breadth of their combined portfolio, with players such as Peribit, the WAN optimization player that added CIFS acceleration to its technology just prior to being acquired by Juniper, and Riverbed, the WAFS developer that is increasing repositioning as a wide area data services, or WDS, vendor.
Equally Cisco, which last year acquired WAFS vendor Actona, has recently integrated the technology it bought there with its own WAN optimization offering, namely its Application and Content Networking Software (ACNS), which caches and streams content.
In other words, WAFS and WAN optimization/app acceleration are tending to merge in order to improve the performance of all apps, including storage, across WANs so as to offer a ‘near-LAN’ experience to corporate users.
DiskSites also announced a relationship with the global outsourcing and infrastructure services arm of Unisys. The IT services group will use the VBranch technology, involving boxes carrying out protocol translation at the data center (called the DiskSites BranchPort) and at the branch office (the DiskSites BranchController) to enable customers to store files centrally yet serve them up to remote sites with the look and feel of being held locally.
DiskSites’ WAFS technology enables companies with distributed networks to replace not only file servers but also DNS, DHCP and print servers at branch offices with its BranchController, through which all these services can then be delivered remotely from a central site. Recently appointed CEO Amir Shaked argued that DiskSites’ technology has advantages vis-a-vis competitors such as Tacit, Riverbed and Actona (now Cisco) in that it handles the issue of synchronicity better than the competition.
In other words, all the others have issues with the process of storing a file in the event that a WAN link goes down, in that there will be a problem of versions.
Of course, even if DiskSites’ technology really is superior in the way it handles writes over the WAN, Actona’s now belongs to Cisco and thus enjoys far greater marketing muscle, so alliances are important if it is going to stay on the radar screens of prospective customers. Oki has the potential to increase DiskSites’ potential in Japan, and Expand should at the very least open doors with existing Expand customers looking for a resolution to issues with proliferating file servers.
