In 1999 I founded Pirus Networks. A technology shift was occurring back then that I felt I could bring some value to. As enterprises shifted from direct attached storage to storage area networks (SAN) I felt it was also a good time to re-examine how data services where being offered in the data center.

At that time all of the data services–like data migration, data replication, file services, and virtualization–were being done at the end points: either the server or the storage system. With SAN technology firmly in place I felt it was a good time to bring those services into the network. Offering SAN based services made a lot of sense, it was a single point of management, scalability was a lot better, and it provided an easier way of bringing data services to heterogeneous systems.

In 2002 Pirus was acquired by Sun Microsystems. It was a great acquisition and Sun was able to deliver the StoreEdge 6920 system powered by the Pirus product. At Sun I ran the Storage Platform Group. In this role I heard first hand the issues customers were facing. The biggest issue I heard was one of complexity. Sure, it’s great having all of these services available–after all, having flexible services with virtualized physical resources is what will make the On-Demand data center a reality. But, as most IT administrators admitted, managing those services and resources can quickly become a nightmare.

Questions such as, How should I virtualize my server or storage to optimize my applications performance? or When and where should I migrate my data? or Is my infrastructure configured properly to support my application portfolio? were all questions that IT folks felt need answering.

After leaving Sun in 2004 I continued to think about this problem. It occurred to me that the only way to truly solve this complexity issue was to fully understand the cross-domain (i.e., server, network, and storage) technologies that 1) make up the data center, 2) characterize the applications requirements for the infrastructure, and 3) use advance analytical techniques to pull it all together.

I realized that if I could characterize, or fingerprint an application and use that fingerprint information against a mathematical representation of the infrastructure then I could bring the knowledge needed to effectively control the data services and virtual resources. My challenge was to bring together infrastructure and application engineers along with mathematicians to work on this complex problem. I felt it was a perfect problem for a startup to attack. Being able to get a small, focused, diverse set of people together in order to solve a complex issue is what startups are best at.

So with that understanding I founded Akorri. With many man years of development already behind us, we’ve produced our first product, BalancePoint. BalancePoint will give IT administrators the visibility and knowledge they need in order to troubleshoot, optimize and plan around their complex environments.

I hope this gives you a good understanding of the thought process behind our company and product. In my next few posts, I’ll explore many of the different balance points that managers and administrators must find as they walk the modern IT tightrope.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Akorri Blog Update, Akorri News & Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.