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Today, Malavalli is the Vice-President (Technology), of Brocade Communications Systems Inc.----which has a market cap of $25 billion----and is a leading player in the storage area networks (SAN) market with a near monopoly marketshare (which is in excess of 90 per cent.) Malavalli has been credited with pioneering work in fibre channel technology, a little known esoteric area that is not only hugely profitable but a technology which may also determine how the web evolves from its current arthritic speed. As the quantum of data in a web-driven world explodes, fibre channel technology is coming into its own as a high speed, high availability link between a single server and a storage device. In spite of the considerable progress of fibre channel technology itself, the SAN market, expected to make data access ubiquitous and reduce storage management costs, is yet to take off in a big way. This is primarily because products for switching is expensive and the standards for supporting software are only evolving. In recognition of his role in pioneering this technology, Kumar Malavalli heads the fibre channel association industry research body, responsible for charting out global standards in the segment. He also holds a number of patents in fibre channel technology. Malavalli, who grew up in the city of palaces, Mysore, and retains strong association with it, was recently in Bangalore on way to his hometown, when BT's Venkatesha Babu caught up with him. Excerpts from the interview: Q: Could you tell us what fibre channel technology is all about and why it is so important... A: Fibre channel is a hybrid technology, which combines both computer channel and networking characteristics. Here, many functions are handled at a lower level protocol with hardware assistance, while preserving the flexibility needed in the construction and use of system interfaces and higher level software. Just running the network fast and increasing the connectivity are not sufficient requirements. The explosion in the amount of data traffic and the number of users being served by today's data centres have led to the emergence of server/SANs. However, to become fully effective, SAN needs a fast and highly reliable delivery of data, uninterrupted access, ability to transfer large block of files, shared storage among multiple clustered servers, robust error detection and recovery procedure, and multiple concurrent transactions with minimum congestion. Fibre channel technology was developed to network servers and storage and to address the ever-growing users' stringent requirements. Put simply, it is a fast serial transport system that moves almost any kind of data reliably over long distances. How does fibre channel technology compare with other competing technologies like Gigabit Ethernet? Unlike Gigabit Ethernet, fibre channel standards not only define media access control layer but also the entire routing and transporting scheme for data. It has provisions for mapping both channel and networking protocols, with a distinct emphasis on hardware assistance to move data. In conventional networking scenarios, using Gigabit Ethernet, the transport function is relegated to an upper level protocol such as TCP (transfer control protocol). In fibre channel, the atomic data transfer unit is a frame, which can be as large as 2,112 bytes. Gigabit Ethernet has a maximum packet size of 1,518 bytes. This small packet size will lead to sending many packets for a large transfer, with the correspondingly more processor interruptions and frequent packet processing overhead, thus reducing the overall throughput. Fibre channel thus has key differentiating attributes that are necessary to build SAN that facilitates both shared storage and server-interconnect. Isn't managing SAN environments that are increasingly large and complex a tough task? Current SAN management tools are built around the desktop management interface model, and are running up against severe management limitations and compatibility issues as users attempt to integrate storage across multiple operating systems, physical devices, and interfaces. Fibre channel systems based on the Common Information Model, will therefore play a key role in delivering interoperable and scalable SAN management applications. Storage Area Networking has now been accepted as an indispensable tool for IT managers to gain control over today's exploding storage requirements in the enterprise. Fibre Channel has become the predominant interconnect technology of the SAN by meeting the strict performance and availability requirements of mission critical applications. Where do you see this technology heading? I believe fibre channel technology is still in its infancy and various standards are being evolved. There are three discrete phases in standards development: the data movement phase, the discovery and management phase, and the interoperable solutions phase. While work is proceeding concurrently in many of these phases, the completion of standards for each phase may be viewed as an enabler for the subsequent phase. Only phase one, covering data movement standards, is complete as of now. This is necessary work, to ensure that the products of vendors are able not only to interoperate, but to enable simplified and cost-effective storage management. This would ultimately lead to the universal, intelligent, self-provisioning storage infrastructure that the IT world is seeking. What are your plans for India? Currently I have angel invested in a number of companies internationally, including one in India called Edurite Technologies, which is in the area of education and training through an IT enabled model. I am examining further proposals for investment. As far as Brocade is concerned, we intend to be present in India by next year to take advantage of the huge technical pool of talent available in the country. |
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Kumar Malavalli represents the
quintessential Silicon Valley Indian icon. Outstanding technical skills,
unimagined riches (net worth of approximately $600 million), and a down to
earth demeanour. However, his is not the conventional under-30 software-techie-millionaire
story. The 56-year-old, soft spoken Malavalli made his millions only
recently, when Brocade Communications, the company he co-founded, came out
with its IPO in 1999.