InterProphet - the Ethernet Storage Area Network Company

Our products move Internet content from the storage directly to applications at wire-speed using LANs:

• RAIDBlaster™ S100, the first product, based on our unique patented technology, Silicon TCP™ serves more than three times the rate of disk content to the Internet than a Sun UltraSparc.
• RAIDBlaster™ SS1000 scales content serving to hundreds of gigabits/sec- to fill any "fat pipes".
• EtherSAN™ storage adaptor cards allow servers to use the RAIDBlaster and existing LAN switches as a lower cost, higher performance storage area network (SAN).

InterProphet is a 9- person late development-stage systems company providing unique scalable Internet storage products and solutions that resolve the "disk I/O bottleneck" faced by any organization that supplies content to the Internet. The bottleneck removed is software that is accelerated by a unique hardware architecture that does the protocol processing during storage transfer. Our products move content from file storage to the Internet at disk drive speed. The products serve a $25B 1999 TAM, with a single channel (enterprise storage) that will cost less than $1M to build. The products are derived from PC cost technology, sell for as much as $70K, displace $500K systems that can't keep up, and work as a drop-in replacement to provide a transparent improvement. We believe we can do second half 1999 with $2.7M in revenue off the sales of hundreds of units per month.

The market validation vehicle for InterProphet’s Silicon TCP™ is the RAIDBlaster S100 Internet attached storage server, initial shipments in Q2/1999, revenue forecast a run rate of over $20 million in 2001.

Value Proposition

Applications such as data warehousing, data mining, on-line transaction processing, and multimedia internet and intranet browsing are resulting in the near doubling of the total storage capacity shipped on an annual basis (source: IDC 1996)

• Disks hold the information (RAID at $17 to $49 per Mbit/sec), networks distribute the information (LAN switch at $1.5 to $5 per Mbit/sec), but processors (at $120 to $625 per Mbit/sec) merely sit in between. Over 60% of a server processor’s resources are used to move information to the Internet. Disk drives spend over 60% of their server capacity waiting for the processor, while using less than 25% of the storage system’s bandwidth to transmit data to the application.
• Silicon TCP does the server’s "heavy lifting" at one quarter the cost (at $25 to $75 per Mbit/s).
• Silicon TCP™ removes bottlenecks to full utilization of already built wider pipes, and can increase the Internet content serving in expandable increments of 1Gbit/sec – twice that of UltraSparc servers.
• Large scale Internet servers must administer two different competing network technologies – a LAN and a storage area network (SAN). 20% of such IT costs stems from non-compatible storage systems management, equipment deployment, and support. With Silicon TCP, the storage area network is built from the already installed LAN itself – compatible from the connector on up.

Current Solutions

• Today the maxim is " If limited by content serving capacity -- buy another server, they’re cheap". Organizations that follow such a strategy quickly find that it increases support overhead, multiplies operational costs and still does not achieve hoped for storage access benefits. Internet services add dozens of servers every month, and still fall behind in content serving capacity.
• Proposed "thin server" solutions are entirely dedicated to putting content on to the network, merely reduce per server cost without value-added benefits. InterProphet products provide scalable disk serving capacity to Interent applications, without inducing inherent parasitic royalty costs for every server, thus producing a lower total cost of ownership (by increasing the effectivenss of servers). InterProphet products don’t scale the costs -- just the performance, reliability.

Market

InterProphet’s Business Plan outlines conservative and achievable revenue objectives addressing the needs of very large markets. Network attached storage is a $9 billion market (25% of the $35 billion storage market), with several industry analysts predicting that all storage will be network attached by 2005. Primary customers for network attached storage include enterprise (departmental and IS servers), database decision support and data warehouses, and CAD servers.

Products

• RAIDBlaster S100 (early go to market)

• • Thin server box (bundled PC, 100BaseT Silicon TCP EtherSAN board with software)
  • $15,000 base system, with $4,000 add-on boards for increased capacity.
  • Expandable to support up to 2 RAID arrays and 1600 Mbit/sec.
  • $43,000 maximum configuration (GM: $30,000)
  • EtherSAN-based technology works with standard LAN software (NFS,SMB, HTTP, and FTP).
  • 3X multiplier in disk server performance.
  • Q498 beta, launch Q299.
• RAIDBlaster SS1000 (scalable multigigabit Internet attached storage system)
• • Scalable storage box (bundled PC, 1000BaseT Silicon TCP EtherSAN board with software).
  • $25,000 base system, with $6,000 add-on boards for increased capacity.
  • Expandable to support up to 8 RAID arrays and 8000 Mbit/sec.
  • $72,000 maximum configuration (GM: $66,000).
  • Works with any TCP.
  • 10X multiplier in disk server performance.
  • Q2/99 beta, launch Q/4 99.

• EtherSAN Storage Adapter Card (wire speed ethernet storage delivery to server applications).

• • No separate storage network required – works with existing standard LAN.
  • Enhance TCP ethernet network to work like fibre channel.
  • Utilizes the same fileserving protocols – merely works faster at full disk drive bandwidth.
  • Dual attach for failover.
  • Launch Q3/99.

Business Model & Distribution Strategy

InterProphet’s business is to design, develop, manufacture and sell system products utilizing the company’s patented Internet acceleration and connectivity technology, Silicon TCP ™, and unique software to provide a full system benefit. In storage serving, for example, the total system improvement is to double the per server bulk Internet content bandwidth annually via successive enhancements to our integrated storage/network content transmission products. In Tier-2 applications/Tier-3 database transactions, for example, a 40% improvement in data record transmission and a 50% improvement in application RPC critical path times due to the elimination of context switches, interrupts and system calls. With advanced SAN-aware middleware like Oracle’s CacheFusion, InterProphet can provide a drop-in solution that turns availability server clusters into scalability clusters.

Systems will be manufactured out of house and sold to major enterprise storage vendors (e.g. EMC, Sun, IBM, Data General, …) as a sales enhancement (up to 30% to vendor – a potential $8M net profit for the vendor in mid range sales in first year!). Partnership with storage management companies (e.g. Veritas, …) provides enhanced Internet storage management capabilities desired by large accounts, which qualify InterProphet solutions for broader/larger market opportunities ($10B TAM 2000), and bring enterprise market acceptance.

Initial market validation strategy (1999) will launch the RAIDBlaster S100 via tradeshow and key, referencable customers (portals, e-commerce, CAD). Mid 1999 will bring first major storage partner for announcement with the RAIDBlaster SS1000. Demonstration with Oracle of Oracle Parallel Server and Net-8 applications enhancements (InterProphet has been a technology partner to Oracle since early 1998) occurs in late 1999, moving company into enterprise channel development mode. In year two and beyond, key partners will include Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, Baan, PeopleSoft. Our storage partner vendors will become the market leaders in the next generation Internet storage market.

Competitive Landscape

Growth Phases

Financial Projection Summary (dollars in millions)