There’s more to Flash than the marketing hype

Q Please can you provide some

background on Tegile – when formed,
with what objectives?
A Tegile was formed in 2010 and
began shipping products in February
2012. The company was formed to
drive the transformation of enterprise
IT by leading the shift in commercial
data storage from traditional disk drive
based architectures to solid-state
optimised systems that accelerate
pplications while delivering economic
efficiencies unobtainable with legacy
technology.
Q Who are the key personnel involved
in Tegile?
A Tegile is led by Rohit Kshertrapal, Rajesh Nair, David Bangs and Narayan Venkat. The executive team has grown companies from concept to over $300M in annual revenue.
Q What are the key company milestones
to date?
A Company founded – 2010
Products shipped – 2012
EMEA Markets Entry – 2013
Q Please can you provide an overview
of what it is that Tegile brings to the
storage networking market?
A Tegile IntelliFlash arrays are perfectly
engineered for performance and
capacity in business-critical enterprise
workloads. They combine two different
classes of storage in one system – one
that provides fast speeds and low
latency as the performance layer, and
a combination of SSDs and HDDs
serving as the capacity layer for
applications such as online transaction
processing, real-time analytics,
decision support, and data
warehousing.
Q How does this differ from the
competition?
A Tegile has a unique architecture that
is up to 7x faster and utilises up
to 85 percent less capacity than
traditional storage. Leveraging in-line
data reduction technologies in front of
the performance layer creates a force
multiplier in the effective size of the
cache driven architecture. Traditional
storage systems that have data
reduction technology implement it
as a post-process that does not yield
a performance benefit.
Q In more detail, please can you tell
us about Tegile’s Intelligent Flash
Storage Arrays?
A By combining high-density media
with high-performance flash, issues
that customers typically have with
all-flash storage systems are its
expensive price per gigabyte, short-
lived components, and lack of density
compared to HDD systems have been
rendered obsolete with the introduction
of the Tegile’s hybrid and all-flash
arrays. Rich features of the IntelliFlash
operating system serve a wide variety
of workloads in the enterprise, for
example, advanced metadata
management eliminates the typical
deterioration of a system’s behavior
as metadata grows over time. Tegile’s
architecture will be able to rapidly
incorporate newer forms of persistent
media (dense flash, or even persistent
memory technologies) seamlessly for
Total Investment Protection.
Q You offer them as hybrid, and all
Flash options?
A Yes – both hybrid and all-flash
configurations are available.
Q How does Tegile technology help
address the storage issues surrounding
server virtualisation?
A Tegile’s intelligent flash arrays eliminate
the IO blender effect of server
virtualisation by using in-line data
reduction to eliminate redundant base
OS images into a single instance that
all VMs point to. Tegile’s caching
algorithms keep this single base OS
image in flash, so flash-class
performance is delivered to every VM.
Tegile has also heavily invested
in VMware VAAI and Microsoft Hyper-V
integration.
Q What about desktop virtualisation?
A The advantage Tegile brings to
server virtualisations is amplified in
VDI environments. Hundreds or
thousands of unique desktop images
are reduced to a single instance stored
in the performance layer of the array
while user data is stored in the
more cost effective capacity layer.
VDI environment capacity consumption
is therefore typically reduced by
80-85 percent.
Q Tegile’s technology also helps in
database applications?
A Databases that have latency sensitive
elements such as redo logs,
leverage Tegile’s caching algorithms
to accelerate business applications by
up to 7X. Redundant database
instances in development/test/QA
environments are reduced to a single
copy and only the differences in each
instance are mutually exclusively stored,
yielding massive cost reductions.
Q Are there any other sweet spots for the
Intelligent Flash Storage Arrays?
A Tegile arrays are very popular in chip
design, software development, service
providers and many other segments
where business critical applications
are accelerated while operationg
costs and human capital costs are
reduced significantly.
Q Recently, Tegile announced an Oracle
partnership tie-up – can you provide
more details on this?
A Tegile and Oracle have developed
a validated configuration that
accelerates business applications
based on Oracle 12c RAC and single
instance databases. Customers can
confidently build their environment
knowing they will balance the
longstanding tension between
performance and capacity while getting
world-class support from Oracle and
Tegile Systems.
Q Tegile also works closely with VMware?
A Yes – Tegile works very close with
VMware on vCenter integration, VAAI
primitive impliementation and go-to-
market programs to help channel
partners deliver the maximum value
from our respective offerings.
Q Are there any other key vendor
partnerships in which Tegile is
involved?
A Tegile also invests in key partnerships
with SanDisk, HGST, Microsoft,
Brocade, Veeam, Commvault and
many other ISVs.
Q Moving on to more general industry
issues, how does Tegile’s technology fit
into the Cloud/Managed Services
world?
A Tegile Systems has a strong presence
in the service provider market. Service
Providers leverage Tegile’s
performance optimisations to host 3-5
more customers on an individual array
than traditional arrays can host. Our
data reduction technologies that
reduce capacity consumption from
30- to 90 percent get translated into
richer gross margins and more
competitive pricing to our SP partners.
Q Presumably, bearing in mind the
database information above, Big Data
is another relevant area for Tegile?
A Having an architecture built on
separate performance and capacity
layers make our systems perfect for big
data implementations.
Q What about the whole software-defined
era – how does this impact on Tegile?
A Tegile’s REST API makes integration
into SDx frameworks and orchestration
layers fast and easy to implement.
Q Solid State Disks and Flash – the same
thing, or do end users need to be
aware of the differences?
A Just as HDDs have different capacity
(3.5”, 7,200RPM) and performance
optimised (2.5”, 15,000RPM)
configurations, SSDs have different
configurations that are optimised for
high IOPs and low latency or high
capacity storage. Customers must be
aware of this bifurcation in the SSD
market and should insist on storage
systems that intelligently manage data
movement across these different
media.
Q How do you see Tegile, and the storage
networking market, evolving over time?
A Tegile has an extensible architecture
that will leverage best in class
performance (perhaps NVME or PCIe,
etc) and high density media (TLC,
3D NAND, etc) over time to deliver
the best balance for our customers.
Tegile will continue to invest in
engineering, sales, marketing and
support to grow into a long standing
enterprise driven to transform the
enterprise storage market.
Q Can you share one or two recent
customer success stories with us?
A Tegile recently won sigificant business
at energy firm Saudi ARAMCO and
athletic shoe and apparel manufacturer
Mizuno. Published case studies are
available for both.
Q How important is the Channel to Tegile
in terms of routes to market?
A Tegile utilises a 100% channel go-to-
market model and has been awarded
CRN’s 5-Star channel recognition every
year we have been in the market.
Q Are there any industry verticals and/or
geographical areas where Tegile is
looking to expand?
A Tegile is investing in technologies and
partnerships that will extend our reach
in the financial services and
healthcare verticals. We also continue
to expand in North America and EMEA.
In 2015, Tegile will expand into APAC
as well.
Q What makes for a good Channel
partner, and how does S3 fit the bill?
A The main thing we look for is the ability
to become a true Partner. ‘Partner’ is
an over used word these days, but
when succesful, we become an integral
part of each others team, generating
new opportunities and working hand-
in-glove in sales opportunities together.

S3 fits the bill perfectly as we are
working closely together on so many
different levels which has resulted in
multiple sales success.

Box
S3’s Technical Director, Mark Smith, on why the company has chosen the Tegile technology

Q What attracted S3 to the Tegile technology?

A The flexible configurations, great performance per £ and the industry accolades have certainly helped but to be honest for S3 its more than just the technology, it’s the team and with the Tegile UK channel team being so helpful and responsive there is really nothing not to like about Tegile.

Q How does it compare, in your opinion, with the
other offerings out there?

A There are a plethora of flash vendors out in the market and some are having better success than others. Without doubt the loudest marketing machines don’t always produce the best products. Tegile have produced a flexible range of systems that support all of the commonly used protocols in a single easy to use platform

Q How has the relationship with Tegile grown over time?

A In the early stages of a new vendor relationship it is all about the people and their willingness to engage. Tegile have shown how the enthusiasm of a new vendor can rub off and it’s easy to see why the S3 team are on-board.

Q How has this benefited your customers?

A When we propose a new vendor or technology, customers want reassurance, references and consistency. Customers want to know it will work, deliver on the promises and be easy to use. Tegile has proven to be a responsive organisation offering trial equipment, demonstrations and reference calls in a quick and efficient manner to ensure no sales momentum is lost.

Q In an ideal world, are there any other attributes you’d like to see Tegile add
to its products?

A The all flash option is a welcome addition over the mainstream hybrid vendors but in the finance vertical we would like to see encryption at rest and the ability to integrate with enterprise management frameworks. The great connectivity and flexible configuration options result in a storage solution that can meet almost any challenge.

Q In summary, how successful is Tegile technology proving for you in terms
of attracting customers?

A Paul and the team make it easy to do business and if it’s easy for S3, it makes it even easier for the customer. The flexible configurations just mean we can fit the solution to the customer, something that is not always the case and the aggressive price point show what can be achieved in today’s market.