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Tegile Systems

Tegile Systems is pioneering a new generation of enterprise storage arrays that balance performance, capacity, features and price for virtualization, file services and database applications. Tegile's Zebi line of hybrid storage arrays is significantly faster than all hard disk-based arrays and significantly less expensive than all solid-state disk-based arrays. Featuring both NAS and SAN connectivity, they are easy-to-use, fully redundant, and highly scalable. Additionally, they come complete with built-in auto-snapshot, auto-replication, near-instant recovery, on- or offsite failover, and virtualization management features. Tegile's patent-pending MASS technology accelerates the Zebi's performance and enables on-the-fly de-duplication and compression of data so each Zebi has a usable capacity far greater than its raw capacity. Additional information is available at www.tegile.com.

see also:- Tegile - editor mentions on StorageSearch.com and Tegile's SSD blog

after AFAs - what's the next box?

animal brands and metaphors in the SSD market

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Tegile was ranked #25 in the Q4 2016 edition of the Top SSD Companies List which is researched and published by StorageSearch.com.

Tegile entered the Top SSD Companies List in Q4 2013.

Tegile's highest position was #8. In both Q3 2014 and Q2 2015

In Q3 2015 Tegile launched a new storage box called IntelliFlash HD based on SanDisk's InfiniFlash SSD hardware box and Tegile's software which can provide 0.5 petabytes of uncompressed flash capacity in 3U.

Back in March 2015, commenting on the launch of InfiniFlash I said - "The availability of cheap, raw, white box rackmount SSDs like this from SanDisk, HGST and other vendors may put some pressure on traditional storage vendors to justify why they charge so much for - what in most cases - are in reality vanilla flash arrays with some added software features."

In the same news story - I also named Tegile as a vendor which (while having creatively priced functionality) would need to react to the cost assumptions set by the InfiniFlash platform.

Which is what they did.

See also:- the whys, wherefores and roadmap to enterprise SSD consolidation


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Editor's earlier comments:- February 3, 2014 - Tegile was ranked #19 (up 7 places) in the Q4 2013 edition of the Top SSD Companies List which is researched and published by StorageSearch.com

Tegile Systems is the highest ranked vendor in this edition of the Top SSD Companies List whose primary business is hybrid SSD arrays - rather than SSD drives or SSD systems. Although - as Rob Commins, VP Marketing, Tegile reminded people in his (later - April 4, 2014) blog - Winning in Flash – But Not Forcing it - "Tegile is a player in the all-flash business too."

In Q4 2013 Tegile continued to feed the newswires with stories about "awards" from various publications including:- The hybrid SSD storage pool market / SSD ASAP market - which began with the first auto caching appliance shipments in September 2009 - remains a business opportunity which is still largely under exploited.

One of the reasons for this is the bewildering number and nature of different types of solutions being thrown at users - mostly as opportunistic line extensions by vendors whose core products are really (at heart) something else.

In such a market - a focused and integrated vendor like Tegile - for whom this is their main product - has all the marketing communications advantages of a single superhero technology narrative. (And it doesn't hurt that this superhero is presented as helping underdogs get results which they know they can't otherwise afford - and also without having to place their trust in the theoretically predicted performance outcomes of a multi-vendor integration casino.)
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Who's who in SSD? - by Zsolt Kerekes, editor - August 2013

Tegile is 1 of more than 200 vendors in the rackmount SSD market, and is also 1 of more than 50 vendors in the SSD ASAP (auto tiering / caching) market. They also compete in these storage segments:- iSCSI SSDs and FC SAN SSDs.

Tegile claims that its unified hybrid storage arrays optimize the balance between capacity, performance and costs by combining SSDs (from HGST) with high capacity SAS hard drives with integrated dedupe and compression. The company claims particularly good advantages in desktop VDI environments - where they say the dedupe data reduction can be as effective as 100 to 1 - although the overall range for all data compression is a saving typically in the 20% to 75% range. Tegile's system also includes internal snapshot and external data replication to ensure that data is protected.

The company says - "We don't simply use SSDs as a tier of storage in our arrays, Tegile has architected the performance benefits of SSDs throughout the data path, giving every application a performance boost."

The base product building blocks are 2U and 3U controller or expansion arrays which provide average raw capacity (per U) around 10TB (HDD), 3TB (flash) and 16GB (RAM).

The company says its market focus is squarely in the medium enterprise, for whom a highly functional, efficient and affordable system is often a better fit than pure SSD.
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Tegile mentions from recent SSD market history

In February 2012 - Tegile announced general availability of its Zebi hybrid storage arrays - which are rackmount SSD ASAPs with internal hard drives and integrated dedupe, compression and snapshot.

In August 2013 - Tegile Systems announced the closing of its $35 million Round C funding led by late-stage venture firm Meritech Capital Partners with additional investment by original stakeholder August Capital and strategic partners WD and SanDisk.
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SSD ad - click for more info
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"One petabyte of enterprise SSD could replace 10 to 50 petabytes of raw HDD storage in the enterprise - and still get all the apps running faster."
the enterprise SSD software event horizon
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Tegile says its sales exceed its VC funding
Editor:- August 13, 2013 - Tegile Systems (which operates in the SSD ASAP market) today announced the closing of its $35 million Round C funding led by late-stage venture firm Meritech Capital Partners with additional investment by original stakeholder August Capital and strategic partners WD and SanDisk.

Editor's comments:- Tegile says that unlike some other VC funded companies in this market space which have lived mostly on investments Tegile has generated more customer revenue than it has taken in outside financing.
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I was even more impressed by a new (to me) business model which Tegile has been testing on selected customers. I can see now why the early investors liked this company even though it took me longer to get it...
an SSD conversation with Tegile (June 24, 2014)
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making history at the US Presidential Debate
Editor:- October 22, 2012 - supporting the US Presidential Debate taking place today at Lynn University is a high availability hybrid storage array from Tegile Systems.

Having won the universitys request for proposal process earlier this year we are diligently working to assemble the technology that will bring the debate to millions of people and households, said Rob Commins, VP of marketing, Tegile Systems. We are honored to be a part of American history in this important way.
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Tegile's SSD ASAPs taught this school a lesson
Editor:- June 12, 2013 - Tegile Systems today published a story about how the kids in a Colorado school still managed to learn stuff when their big bad old HP SAN array failed to take the VDI strain which had been anticipated from a pilot. Whoops - who did the modelling? Anyway Tegile saved the day with some SSDs and one of their hybrid arrays....read the story

Editor's comments:- when you see the word "school" in an SSD story - it signals the message "these customers didn't have much money but they could still afford to buy our stuff." - It's a segmentation / value loaded marketing keyword messaging filtering thing. Other examples like this are:-
  • when Google buys some SSDs - you know these Google people are so clever - and buy so much. They must have got it cheap....
  • when a medium sized enterprise which you have never heard of before - which makes steel parts for tractors features in a story about buying an SSD solution...
  • when a financial markets data services provider (they have nice offices) features in an SSD story...
I'll leave you to supply those missing dot-dot-dots yourself. Everyone has different ways of relating to these kinds of stories (tuning in or filtering out).
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Were the once reasonable assumptions behind Tegile's utility pricing business model broken and shattered by the SSD price hikes in 2017?

That would mean repeat customers would see big bumps where before those were hidden by financial wizardry.

I've written my speculative thoughts about why Western Digital had to acquire Tegile.
Western Digital buys Tegile (August 2017)
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Micron enters rackmount SSD market
SSD news (May 2017)
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Tegile gets another $33 million funding
Editor:- April 11, 2017 - Tegile today announced $33 million in additional funding which was led by Western Digital and current investors. With this financing, Tegile has raised a total of $178 million to date.
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Fastest Growing Storage Companies in 2017?
Editor:- March 25, 2017 - 3 SSD companies were among those listed in a new article - 10 Fastest Growing Storage Companies 2017 - by Silicon Review . Editor's comments:- all 3 companies operate in the rackmount SSD market - which is an interesting indicator of where the action is. There's still everything to play for for as the market is still still "under construction".
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SSD ad - click for more info
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Now we're seeing new trends in pricing flash arrays which don't even pretend that you can analyze and predict the benefits using technical models.
Exiting the Astrological Age of Enterprise SSD Pricing
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51% of Tegile's AFA customers expect ROI in 1 year
Tegile survey re enterprise customersEditor:- June 25, 2015 - A recently published survey conducted among customers of Tegile reveals some interesting insights into the demographics of Tegile's business but also - just as interesting - provides a spectrum of weighted answers about why people bought enterprise flash arrays and the perceived benefits.

Among the many results - the most interesting for me were:-
  • "36% plan to use their Tegile storage to accelerate the development of new products and services. Customers can create read/write clones of production databases. This enables them to get new applications into production faster without consuming a lot of storage space."

    Editor's comments:- that's a classic enterprise SSD advantage related to a pain point which I was discussing with users over 10 years ago.

    Users who don't have the performance freedom which SSDs deliver - but who struggle even to keep their legacy platforms running sluggishly - know there must be better things they can do with their raw business intelligence - but are too scared to interact with the production data. And designing new systems based on sampling - doesn't give the full picture.
  • Tegile says "51% of customers expect to see an ROI in 12 months or less."

    Editor's comments:- that's confirmation of something I said in my article - year of the enterprise SSD goldrush?

    "what's driving this confidence is that their customers have done the pilots- they've done the product tweaks - the biggest customers have finished their cautious rollouts - and they're coming back asking for more than more. The user mood is changing from - can I afford to use SSDs? - to a realization that - I can't afford not to use SSDs." (October 2011)

    What Tegile's survey confirms is that the same advantages which were first experienced by early adopters do indeed trickle down and deliver similar impacts to mainstream users (if the products are priced in a way which is attractive enough to tempt new customers to experiment.
The survey findings which I've commented on above - probably apply to any leading AFA vendor and not just Tegile.

Here are some interesting results which are specific to Tegile's business.
  • Re the importance of offering "unified" connectivity (FC+IP) - "over half (53%) were using more than one storage protocol with their Tegile arrays."

    Editor's comments:- that's a higher proportion than I had assumed. Which also is consistent with the broad spectrum of traditional storage suppliers that Tegile has been displacing (another aspect shown in the survey).
  • Re customer satisfaction? - 92% of responders said that they'd recommend Tegile.

    Editor's comments:- that's a good story for a company whose business model has been so reliant on external funding to sustain its growth.

    But how sticky is brand loyalty in the enterprise flash market? Especially when we're entering a period where I predict that over 90% of enterprise SSD brands will disappear?

    Let's just say that high customer satisfaction is an excellent achievement but that a customer who has switched once because they saw a good reason to do so - is a customer who could easily switch again. While Tegile has some sticky service and software solutions in its product delivery - don't be beguiled by statements like the above - if and when you consider the IPO.

    And - on the perils of extrapolating inferences from surveys - 96 users - the customers who took part in the survey - aren't the whole market.
...read the article - Why do people use Tegile Flash Storage?
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Tegile gets another $70 million funding
Editor:- May 27, 2015 - Tegile today announced it has closed a $70 million Series D funding round bringing the companys total capital raised to $117 million.

Since shipping its first hybrid storage array in 2012 Tegile says it has deployed more than 1,500 systems.
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Tegile is 1 of 14 companies named in this 2014 retrospective article on StorageSearch.com
what changed in SSD year 2014?
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90% of the enterprise SSD companies which you know have no good reasons to survive
drivers, mechanisms and routes towards consolidation
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those who tweet loudest
those who tweet loudest in hybrid storage arrays imageEditor:- February 18, 2015 - Re the visibility seeking marketing activities of enterprise storage companies - I found much to agree with in a recent blog - Hybrid Storage Array Industry Social Landscape - by Don Jennings, Senior VP - Lois Paul & Partners (a storage industry proven PR).

Among other things Don says "not many of the storage companies in our analysis have clear content strategies to provide information and value to their followers. This is especially true on YouTube, where these companies are rarely posting anything other than product-usage videos. We also dont see any of them engaging with industry media and influencers..."

The essential output from Don's article is that he ranks 5 companies in the hybrid storage array market - based on the noise level and following they have achieved on social media.

The companies (in alphabetic order) are:- . Setting aside for the moment any reservations you might have about the validity of using social media as a significant enough comparative measure for enterprise companies - Don comes up with some interesting statistics for each company about the level of its followers, tweets etc.

And by that measure Nimble comes out top of his list. ...read the article

Editor's comments:- As with any measurement - you have to ask questions like
  • why has this method been chosen? Is it simply convenience?
  • And how valid does such a ranking carry over into other interpretations? etc - such as future business outcomes.
In this case - the agenda is clear enough - Don's company LPP is in the media business - and some companies are clearly more noisy (and better understood) than others in "editorial like" contexts.

If your company isn't doing well enough in the social media blare - then maybe you should change your agency.

A devil's advocate counter argument to that might be to say that a single well designed ad can take a company positioning message to more targeted people than all the people who see a vendor's tweets and blogs in a year. And every day I see companies in this industry who lack the confidence to invest in themselves in an advertising context - preferring instead to cast their fortunes on the winds of the media lottery newswires.

And another counter argument is that not all important relationships and engagements are as visible as you might think on social media. Why should they be - if there are pre-existing or better ways in which the parties in the same mutual interest segment can communicate?

For example - I've been talking to Don Jennings regularly about his storage industry customers since June 2003 - but (at the time of writing this) we aren't 1st level contacts on linkedin.

And a lot of the people I talk to about weighty matters in the SSD market would be horrified by the idea of others knowing what they're thinking about. I'm not saying that one private communication is worth ten tweets - but if it's about about a new business plan - or the order from your biggest customer - it can be worth much more.

On the other hand. Social media may be the only independent (non financial and non technical) way you can rank some of the companies you're interested in. As only 1 of the 5 companies above - for example - has got high enough in the search noise level to appear in the Top SSD Companies.
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