Earlier this month, IT Europa attended the IT Press Tour across Silicon Valley to meet various data management companies. Further to our previous stories from the Tour, here’s a round-up of some further partnership opportunities.
MaxLinear
MaxLinear is a well-established provider of chips and accelerators for the optical networking, data centre interconnectivity and data storage markets, with AI workloads the latest driver for new markets in the cloud, data warehouses and data lakes.
Recently, MaxLinear announced a technology partnership with Dell, to integrate its Panther III storage accelerator with the Dell PowerMax storage platform for enterprises, aiming to deliver “unparalleled performance gains” for mission-critical workloads.
"The collaboration between MaxLinear and Dell marks a significant milestone in the evolution of storage solutions for AI-powered business," says MaxLinear. "As AI/ML drives the need for higher data storage capacity and scalability, the combination of our cutting-edge technology in data reduction, de-duplication and encryption, along with Dell's expertise in architecting storage solutions, we are redefining the boundaries of performance, scalability, and reliability in storage systems.”
MaxLinear says it is now looking for further technology partners for Panther. Panther III first went into production at the end of last year, with now “tens of thousands” of Panther cards in commercial deployment globally, said the supplier. The company has also confirmed that Panther IV is now on the drawing board, with increased data compression and data throughput to come as a result.
Juicedata
Juicedata is a startup promising a cheaper data management system for companies, after launching an Enterprise Edition of its open source JuiceFS software. JuiceFS was previously launched as a Community Edition, which still exists. Juicedata presented cheaper data processing scenarios, when compared to an AWS FSx for Lustre deployment, for instance.
“Storage does not mean expensive hardware and complex maintenance work. Juicedata is committed to empowering every enterprise to easily tackle the challenges of massive data and high-performance workloads,” says the firm.
The enterprise version is designed for data-intensive, high-performance workloads, that can serve thousands of concurrent clients for mixed data jobs.
The company already has customers in the generative AI, autonomous driving, quantitative trading, and BioTech spaces.
Its existing go-to-market includes the main cloud providers of AWS, Google and Azure, along with Oracle Cloud, and French cloud services provider Scaleway.
Juicedata says it is preparing to first build its marketing and sales team in North America, before moving to build up its presence in the EMEA region, to help support its move into higher-scale enterprise software.
DDN/Tintri
DDN is well established in the high-performance computing space, and its Tintri business unit continues to grow its channel in the enterprise data management market. And both are benefiting from the increased data needs of AI, with Tintri having recently launched a new partner drive across EMEA.
On AI generally, and whether it offered the significant and overall channel growth promised, James Commer, SVP, products at DDN, said: “There is AI hype, but this hype is different, AI is a hot technology that makes things real.”
Commer cited AI uses cases that are already happening in robotics, healthcare, content creation, and finance. “We have seen large-scale investments in AI and there will be real advances in the next 12 months.”
He said AI progress would affect the whole spectrum of vertical industries, and that end-users would see the benefits too.
With a finite supply of some of the technologies needed to deliver AI though, like GPUs, Commer warned: “There is an AI gold rush, and some AI plays may not be real, even though those companies have the money. Those resources they are acquiring are in-demand, and they are perhaps preventing other more serious companies in AI getting them in a limited market.”
The next IT Press Tour will take place in Istanbul, Turkey in early September.
