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JNI Corp., a San Diego-based producer of storage adapters and software, will get related technology as part of a $10.5 million deal with Troika Networks Inc.
As part of the deal, announced last week, JNI will get Troikas Zentai Controller and Path Command Plus products, as well as customer support. Zentai, like JNIs own products, is a PCI-to-Fibre Channel card but with advanced high-availability features for Windows.
Path Command Plus is similar software for storage area networks and has high-availability functions, an area into which JNI officials said the company has been trying to expand.
EMC Corp. and Veritas Software Corp. offer similar software. However, outside of price and JNI having its own controllers as part of the host bus adapter, JNIs technology is distinct in its functionality, said Darryll Smith, manager of network management products.
The acquisition will help JNI build better RAID failure detection; automated reconfiguring of target device states; and features for failover, fail back and load balancing, Smith said.
Those features will be live later this year and will come with a three-year warranty; Troika offered a 13-month warranty.
Separately, JNI plans to continue developing 2G-bps and InfiniBand products, officials said.
For Troika, of Westlake Village, Calif., the deal signifies its exit from the adapter area, where the most noteworthy customer was Hitachi Data Systems Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif., division of Tokyos Hitachi Ltd. But the deal with JNI was made with HDS blessing, and Troika will now focus on storage service provider technology, a spokeswoman said.
“I think its a great partnership,” said analyst Eric Sheppard, of International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.
Because of co-branding, the deal will help Troika spread its name to JNIs larger, higher-end customer pool, while JNI expands beyond the Unix market into the high-end Windows market. The new warranty is particularly impressive, Sheppard said. In addition, he said, the deal can help JNI battle larger rivals such as Emulex Corp. and QLogic Corp.