When IBM bought Israeli storage startup XIV in January for a reported $300 million it all looked promising. But six months later, something's amiss. XIV came out last week with a hardware announcement buried in the IBM Web site about its first products under the Big Blue banner, <A HREF="http://blogs.eweek.com/storage_station/content/why_ibm_is_regretting_300m_xiv_acquisition.html?kc=EWKNLINF08202008STR1">but IBM corporate is strangely quiet about it.</A> It made a simple announcement for the European market only. In other words, it's not pinging its PR agencies, breathlessly trying to get the news out.

Why not? The reason, some industry insiders--including Storage Anarchist blogger (and, please note, EMC storage strategist) Barry Burke, longtime storage analyst Arun Taneja, and Omneon veep Geoff Stedman--are saying, is that XIV didn't deliver the goods. It doesn't have anything that sets itself apart from others in the marketplace. In other words, it is apparent by the parent company's lack of ballyhoo that its products simply aren't good enough to supplant products IBM already has on hand. Or, they're just not good enough, period.