Zetera

About Zetera

Zetera Corporation, founded in 2002 by Chuck Cortright and Bill Frank, was a technology company that developed storage solutions before ceasing operations. Headquartered in Irvine, California, the company focused on creating low-cost, IP-based connectivity for storage arrays.

The core of Zetera's offering was its patent-pending Z-SAN (Storage Area Network) and SoIP (Storage over Internetworking Protocol) technology. This software-based solution enabled storage devices to operate over standard IP networks, eliminating the need for expensive and complex hardware typically associated with traditional storage architectures. The business model centered on licensing its client/server software to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), who would then integrate it into their own storage products. By using common IP switches and routers, Z-SAN was designed to make network storage simple enough for non-technical users to configure and manage, which was a significant cost-saving benefit.

Zetera's technology allowed for the virtualization of storage, meaning data could be shared, spanned, and mirrored across multiple devices in different physical locations without complex virtualization software. The company gained some traction, announcing in 2006 that over 100,000 SAN devices based on its technology had been shipped since their debut in September 2005. A notable achievement was the use of its Z-SAN enclosures in a 1.4 petabyte storage array for a research project at MIT. In May 2005, the company secured $13.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Warburg Pincus and WI Harper Group. Despite these milestones, Zetera was officially declared out of business in July 2021.