IBM buys XIV and the next day Netapp buys Onaro. Israeli storage startups, once as abundant as Canadian snowflakes, or goose droppings on a nice golf course, are becoming increasingly rare. We tracked 24 of them in 2001. Now we're down to only a handful. Exanet and Files-X are the only old-timers left I think. Continuity, Diligent and StorWize are relative newcomers still in the fight. Sepaton was Sangate 45 years ago, but now is about as American as Brittany Spears so they don't count. Diligent will be the next to go – with the run on bulk storage plays designed to support the new era of digital content, a big honking de-dupe data protection play for big data centers like them will get scooped up this year. I don't see how Continuity lasts for more than 1-2 more years without getting bought either, and if the StorWize stuff works as advertised then they just have to wait. Folks that help other folks stuff 800lbs. of junk into a 2lb. container are finding themselves more and more popular. Exanet can make a claim in the envious world of mega-scale, and will probably spin themselves up as the file equivalent of what XIV brought to the table. I'm not sure exactly what Files-X is up to these days (but still hold hope for them as they were founded by my pal Jacob Herbst and we are bonded together by 9/11). Where will we be then? Maybe we should start a pool as to who will be the last standing. "The last of the Israeli Storage company's" sounds like a boring tale but it worked for "The Last Emperor" and "Last of the Mohicans".
Can it really be that there are only 5 active Israeli storage players left? Surely I'm missing someone, but when in the last 20 years has there been such a dearth of Israeli companies in the space? When XIV's Moshe Yanai became an international sensation after creating and riding the wave that was Symmetrix at EMC, it seems every former Israeli commando turned engineer was starting or joining a storage company. There has been more money per person generated out of the storage business within Israel over the last 20 years than any other industry. (Yes, I completely fabricated that fact but I bet I'm darn close).
Israel has one of the best educated populations on the planet. They seem particularly adept at engineering. Love or hate them, you have to acknowledge that as a gross overgeneralization – they are smart. If one were to observe the rush to the storage industry by the Israeli's 20 plus years ago as a harbinger of what was to come, and placed some bets in that area, one would be filthy stinking rich right now. Should we assume that since the numbers say the Israeli's are no longer interested in the Storage industry, that this is a new harbinger we should consider?
Don't get me wrong, it could be coincidence, or the fact that from 2000-2006 the stock market became so anemic that startup funding in general hit an all time low and we're just seeing the result of that, but I'm not sure. It could be that we truly are a global industry today, as exhibited by the fact that there are lots of U.K. and other European technology efforts under way. Heck, China is starting to innovate in the area.
I hope I'm just paranoid, as I do enjoy being briefed on technology by people who have the ability to kill me a hundred ways with a napkin.
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