Nimble Storage
CEO: Suresh Vasudevan
Market Cap: $754 million
San Jose, Calif.-based flash storage specialist Nimble Storage is another vendor with close ties to Cisco through a strategic partnership. Analysts say Nimble's Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) technology -- an IP-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilitates -- would fit into Cisco's needs.
"Nimble plays well in the iSCSI space, which is where Cisco has a lot of focus," said Schulz. "They're also seen as one of the new, upcoming players -- hence it might be very attractive to Cisco right now."
