Another Start-Up in SSD Caching Software: Cachebox

Headquartered in the Silicon Valley, Cachebox, Inc. is a software company currently in start-up "pre-revenue mode".

The majority of its development team is based in Pune, India, in a wholly-owned subsidiary, Cachebox India Pvt Ltd. (Stec has also R&D in the same city)

Officially its product is named Cache Advance, a "software optimizing storage with caching." More precisely, it’s a caching software for SSDs to dynamically move HDD data onto a fast SSD of smaller capacity to improve net I/O performance.

"Our architecture is developed with APIs to support add-on modules that will be application specific to increase percentage cache hits (cache performance). This will ultimately be an open API for 3rd party developers. All of this functionality will be available in a later release. There are no app-specific modules at this time," according to CMO Julian Henkin. "We are about to enter Beta Test phase for our initial product."

The company said it has three market differentiation:

• Superior I/O performance, including high cache utilization (cache performance) as well as low latency
• Low system load and system requirements, especially RAM and CPU utilization
• Application awareness in order to further improve cache performance – including ‘pre-fetching’ data before it is even requested from the HDD.
• Easy software installation and configuration; no kernel reconfiguration

The three main executives of Cachebox:

•  CEO Lorenzo Salhi: His background includes the CEO role at Silicon Valley Solutions (acquired by PNY Techologies) in DRAM and SSD solutions, punctuated by sixteen-year career at STEC. Later in his tenure, as VP sales, he was responsible for two-thirds of the company’s revenue. He founded ForeFront Tech Group and worked at SimpleTech.
• CMO Julian Henkin: For the past seven years, he has led a marketing, brand and customer-interaction advisory services firm Golden Gate Consulting. Firms which he has either advised or been directly employed by include Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com), Green Ventures International, Impact Capital, IntraLinks, Viacom and Xerox.  
• SVP develoment, director of India ops Murali Nagaraj: At Veritas (now Symantec), he influenced technologies like Veritas File System, clustering for HA and performance and CDP,  and holds patents related to these storage technologies.