Businessweek

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., a fabless semiconductor company, produces and supplies interconnect products that facilitate data transmission between servers, storage systems and communications infrastructure equipment, and other embedded systems. The company’s end-to-end solutions, including adapter, gateway and switch integrated circuits (ICs), adapter cards, switch systems, gateway systems, software, services and cables are integral parts of a total interconnect solution focused on computing, storage and communication applications used in multiple markets, including high-performance computing (HPC), Web 2.0, storage, financial services, database and cloud. Products The company provides solutions which are based on and meet the specifications of the InfiniBand standard in addition to products that also support the Ethernet standard. Its InfiniBand products include adapter ICs and cards (InfiniHost product family) and switch ICs (InfiniScale product family) and systems, gateway ICs (BridgeX product family) and gateway systems, software and cables. The company’s adapters and cards (ConnectX, ConnectX-2 and ConnectX-3 product families) also support the Ethernet interconnect standard in addition to InfiniBand. Its SwitchX family of silicon and systems supports both Ethernet and InfiniBand, and includes gateways to Fibre Channel. The company’s gateway devices support bridging capabilities from InfiniBand to Ethernet. The company provides adapters to server, storage, communications infrastructure and embedded systems original equipment manufacturer (OEMs) as ICs or standard card form factors with PCI-X or PCI Express interfaces. Adapter ICs or cards are incorporated into OEM server and storage systems to provide InfiniBand and/or Ethernet connectivity. All of its adapter products interoperate with standard programming interfaces and are compatible with previous generations. The company also supports server operating systems, including Linux, Windows, AIX, HPUX, Solaris and VxWorks. The company also provides switch ICs to server, storage, communications infrastructure and embedded systems OEMs to create switching equipment. To deploy an InfiniBand or Ethernet fabric, any number of server or storage systems that contain an adapter can be connected to a communications infrastructure system, such as an InfiniBand or Ethernet switch. The company has also introduced switch systems that include 8-port, 18-port, 36-port, 108-port, 216-port, 324-port and 648-port. The company offers custom products that incorporate ICs to select server and storage OEMs that meet their special system requirements. The company also provides OEM customers software and tools that facilitate the use and management of its products. Developed in conjunction with the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA), its Linux- and Windows-based software enables applications to utilize the features of the interconnect. The company provides a suite of software tools and a comprehensive management software solution, Unified Fabric Manager, for managing, optimizing, testing and verifying the operation of InfiniBand and Ethernet switch fabrics. The company also provides gateway management software, FabricIT BridgeX Manager, which runs on BridgeX gateway systems to manage I/O consolidation from an InfiniBand network to Ethernet and Fibre Channel for cluster, cloud and virtual environments. In addition, the company provides a suite of acceleration software (Virtual Messaging Accelerator, or VMA, Fabric Collective Accelerator, or FCA, Virtual Storage Accelerator, or VSA, and Unstructured Data Accelerator, or UDA). The company provides a selection of passive and optical cabling and modules to enable InfiniBand and Ethernet connectivity. Sales and Marketing The company sells its products worldwide through multiple channels, including direct sales force, a network of domestic and international sales representatives and independent distributors. It has strategically located sales personnel in the United States, Europe, China, Japan, India, Taiwan and South America. Research and Development The company’s research and development expenses were $92.5 million in 2011. Trade Marks The company has registered ‘Mellanox’, ‘BridgeX’, ‘ConnectX’, ‘ORE-Direct’, ‘InfiniBridge’, ‘InfiniHost’, ‘InfiniScale’, ‘PhyX’, ‘SwitchX’, ‘Virtual Protocol Interconnect’ and ‘Voltaire’ as trademarks in the United States. It has a trademark application pending to register ‘FabricIT’, ‘MLNX-OS’ and ‘Unbreakable-Link’. Intellectual Property As of December 31, 2011, the company had 37 issued patents and 47 patent applications pending in the United States, 5 issued patents in Taiwan, 5 issued patents in Israel, 2 issued patents in the United Kingdom, 1 patent issued each in Germany and France, and 2 patent applications pending in China which cover aspects of the technology in its products. Customers The company sold its products to approximately 269 customers worldwide, as of December 31, 2011. The company supplies its products to Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell, Oracle, Fujitsu, Data Direct Networks, Isilon/EMC, Network Appliance, Xsigo, and Xyratex. Its products are also used as embedded solutions by companies such as GE Fanuc, Toshiba Medical and Sea Change International. Significant Events Acquisition of Voltaire Ltd.: In February, 2011, the company acquired Voltaire Ltd. (Voltaire). Voltaire designs and develops scale-out computing fabrics for data centers, high performance computing, and cloud computing environments. Voltaire's family of scale-out fabric switches, application acceleration software and advanced fabric management software improves the performance of mission-critical applications, through infrastructure consolidation, and lower power consumption. In October 2012, Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. announced the creation of Mellanox Federal Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of the company. Mellanox Federal Systems would be responsible for driving business development for all federal government agencies and the federal integrator market. Competition The company’s main competitor includes QLogic Corporation. History Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. was incorporated under the laws of Israel in 1999.