JNI Adds Windows Capabilities With Troika Deal

JNI Corp. will license hardware and software from Troika Networks Inc., reselling some Troika products as well as integrating some of its partner's technology into its own. The deal gives advanced Windows capabilities to JNI, a $100 million storage area network vendor who is already a leader in the Solaris Unix market.

Users should benefit from JNI's support for Troika's Zentai controllers, which provide a bridge between SCSI-based servers and storage and JNI's Fibre Channel-based host bus adapters, which connect servers to a SAN. JNI also will license Troika's Path Command Plus software, which is the leading Windows scalability software. Troika plans to focus on storage network connectivity services.

Troika had the technology but needed a brand name to be successful, says International Data Corp. analyst Eric Sheppard. "At the same time, JNI hasn't done well in the high-end Windows server market," he says. "Now JNI can add scalability capabilities like multipathing to its arsenal, which includes a good track record with Solaris SAN users who are risk-averse."