Whiptail Technologies LLC, was previously a privately held company that builds

data storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are conside ...

systems out of

solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is ...

components. Whiptail designed and commercialized the use of

NAND flash Flash memory is an Integrated circuit, electronic Non-volatile memory, non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for t ...

memory as a replacement for

hard disk drives A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk platter, platters ...

in large-scale storage systems. The company is named after the whiptail racerunner, a fast lizard species indigenous to the southwestern United States. On October 29, 2013, Whiptail was acquired by Cisco Systems for approximately US $415M. ''Cisco Press Release''

History

Headquartered in

Whippany, New Jersey Whippany is a unincorporated community located within Hanover Township in Morris County, New Jersey, United States. Whippany's name is derived from the Whippanong Native Americans, a tribe that once inhabited the area. Whippanong meant "place ...

, with offices in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

, and

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, Whiptail was founded in 2009 by Edward T Rebholz CEO and (now CTO) James Candelaria. Early investors included Ignition Partners,

RRE Ventures RRE Ventures is an American Venture capital, Venture Capital firm based in New York City. The firm primarily invests in Seed money, seed, Series A round, series A and series B rounds and focuses on companies operating in the software, internet, c ...

and Spring Mountain Capital. In January 2012, Series B funding was reported as "more than $10 million." In December 2012, Whiptail announced a $31 million funding round. Ignition Partners led the Series C financing, with

SanDisk SanDisk is a brand for flash memory products, including memory cards and readers, USB flash drives, solid-state drives, and digital audio players, manufactured and marketed by Western Digital. The original company, SanDisk Corporation was acquire ...

Ventures joining as the new strategic investor. Existing investors, RRE Ventures and Spring Mountain Capital also participated. Whiptail released the XLR8r in 2009. In May 2012, Whiptail announced the ''ACCELA'' all-flash storage array, and ''INVICTA'', which featured scaling, high-availability, modular and multi-protocol technology. In November 2012, Whiptail announced ''INVICTA INFINITY'', which they said exceeded 4 million IOPS and 40 GB/second data rate and an upgrade to version 4.1. of the software ''RACERUNNER'', which allows businesses to replicate data to a non-Whiptail target array. On January 31, 2011, former CTO of

Brocade Communications Systems Brocade is an American technology company specializing in storage networking products, now a subsidiary of Broadcom Inc. The company is known for its Fibre Channel storage networking products and technology. Prior to the acquisition, the comp ...

Dan Crain became CEO. On March 12, 2013, former

SunGard SunGard was an American multinational company based in Wayne, Pennsylvania, which provided software and services to education, financial services, and public sector organizations. It was formed in 1983, as a spin-off of the computer services div ...

CEO Cristóbal Conde was named Whiptail Chairman of the Board. In 2012, Whiptail partnered with

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

Citrix Citrix Systems, Inc. is an American multinational cloud computing and virtualization technology company that provides server, application and desktop virtualization, networking, software as a service (SaaS), and cloud computing technologies. C ...

Micron The micrometre ( international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; SI symbol: μm) or micrometer (American spelling), also commonly known as a micron, is a unit of length in the International System of Unit ...

and

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

. Whiptail works with the Cisco VXI (Virtualization Experience Infrastructure) and the UCS (Unified Computing System). ''INVICTA'' and ''ACCELA'' are verified as Citrix Ready. The Citrix Ready program identifies solutions that are trusted to enhance virtualization, networking and cloud computing solutions from Citrix, including Citrix XenDesktop, XenApp, XenServer, NetScaler and GoToMeeting. In December, 2012, SanDisk announced an investment in Whiptail via SanDisk Ventures, the company’s newly formed strategic investment arm, with Alex Lam joining the company as a Board Observer. Whiptail’s ''INVICTA'' and ''ACCELA'' storage arrays achieved VMware Ready status. On September 10, 2013,

announced its intent to acquire Whiptail for $415 million, with a plan to incorporate Whiptail's technology within Cisco UCS fabric offerings at a hardware and manageability level. On July 24, 2015,

announced the end-of-life (EOL) of Whiptail products, specifically the Invicta Appliance and Scaling System products.

Products

Product specifications:

References

{{reflist Companies based in Morris County, New Jersey American companies established in 2009 Computer storage companies Computer companies established in 2009 2009 establishments in New Jersey Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies