In The Arena by TechArena - With Intel News, Graid Expands Quest to Deliver World-Class RAID

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Graid Technology takes on Intel VROC licensing for data center and workstation customers, extending its RAID portfolio to offer both CPU-integrated and GPU-accelerated solutions.

Welcome to Tech Arena, featuring authentic discussions between tech's leading innovators and our host, Alison Klein. Now, let's step into the arena. Welcome in the arena. My name's Alison Klein. We are doing a very special episode today. I've got Tom Packett, Senior Vice President and GM of Sales in Europe and the U.S. and board member of grade technology with me in Yassik Wissolski, G.L. of Insula, V. Rock, and Inflop Corporation, Tom and Yossick, welcome to the program. Thank you, Tom and Yossack. Can you just quickly introduce yourselves and your respective roles at your company? Tom, you might want to go first. Sure thing. Thanks. So my name is Tom Paquette. I'm a senior vice president and general manager for great technologies.

business in the Americas, in Amia and Australia, New Zealand. And I'm also fortunate enough to be a member of the board of directors. In Yalcide. Yalzai, so I'm part of Intel Corporation and I'm responsible for Intel V-Rock. I'm general manager and running the business there. So you guys made an incredible announcement today. Why don't we just start with a summary of the announcement. Tom, would you like to provide that? Sure, Allison. So what we are announcing today is a definitive agreement between great technologies and Intel. We're great to assume by a license the responsibility to sell, support, maintain, and enhance the V-Roc product. And what that means is we are going to be taking V-Roc, which has been stabilized if you would,

functionally stabilized by Intel, and we're going to take it under the wing at great technology and continue to move it forward. Very exciting. I know a lot about V-Rock from my history, but for our listeners who may not be familiar with the landscape, can you explain the key differences between V-Rock and Supreme Raid? Certainly. If you think about what we both do today, right at the core of everything, we solve the same problem, and that's helping customers protect data, which is arguably the customer's most valuable asset. And in doing that, ensuring resiliency across the board,

we do this in two different ways. VRock, as you know, and JASIC will expand on this, is a CPU-based technology that's really tightly integrated with IntelZion platforms. Supreme Rate, on the other hand, uses the GPU for acceleration, and we offload the rate processing, unlocking just massive amounts of throughput, which if you think about where does it fit in the world, artificial intelligence, machine learning, high-performance computing,

applications where speed and that all desired throughput are everything to the customer. And Alison, if you think about Intel Viroc, we are basically a hybrid solution, which is a very unique approach because we have Gates integrated, technology deeply into the Zon CPU, which basically creates a nice fusion of software and those gates that gives us ability to avoid additional HBAs in the system, etc. This, of course, makes it very simple, efficient. We are able to use just a sliver of the ZL CPU to provide great performance.

And this basically satisfies great plethora of workloads across enterprise, data center usages, virtualization, or even workstations today. If you think about this, because we integrated everything already in the CPU that you have, it is a very cost-effective solution and provides all the important features like blinking LEDs, out-of-the-manageability, and all the important stamp that people love. And because you don't need to have a harder adapter or HBA card in your system, it also removes the space constraints from a lot of boxes. Very cool. No, with this acquisition, grade is essentially consolidating two major rate approaches under one roof. As you've described, GPU accelerated and CPU-based solutions. How does adding the latter change grades positioning in the marketplace?

I don't think it does at all, Alison. I think bringing Vrock under the great umbrella has got to allow our customers more flexibility. If you think about traditional C3P, Rade, which B. Rock is, its reliability at a great value, and the GPU accelerated raid is for ultimate performance. So we think that this combination really sets us apart and positions us to benefit. You know, everybody talks about the exponential growth of the explosion of data that we're seeing. And some of the statistics say, look, the volume of data in the world is doubling every four years. Well, that data needs to be protected. And as Jasek mentioned, the moment ago, we can now position ourselves to protect a myriad of different types of workloads, everything from simple corporate databases up to the most highest performant artificial intelligence

and machine learning applications. So it really broadens grades spectrum and broadens grades approach to the market. And if you think from the broader perspective, like how I see what we as IntelVirok team bring to the picture, we are also providing hundreds of hours. of collective rate and storage expertise. So we think that this will definitely fuel the innovation and combining the two solutions thinking about different approaches that now become the fusion for even lower innovation.

It really gets us very exciting. And I can't tell you how excited I am to bring with these people into the great fault. There are some brilliant people in this for it. And we're thrilled to have them. This is deeply in our blood to be, you know, customer focused and obsessed. We want their harms, and we think that, you know, we're bringing not only the number of customers, but also their passion behind BROC. So we think that this also will help combine teams to basically work together and strike in the market.

And if you think about what Juston said, now you have the solution that not only works in the pre-OS environment, not only in all those OSEs that BROC support and provide the workstations and other stuff. Now you're adding this extreme high-performance solution on top of it, And it is just amazing to even think about the possibilities. Yeah, Tom, for my time at Intel, I know how talented this team is. So, I agree what an amazing engineering asset and so good to see this move. And Yasaki mentioned the loyal customers. There's an interesting story here about Intel's, which we tried to sunset Vrock

and getting pushback from loyal customers. It was quite interesting to see. what does that customer loyalty tell you about the responsibility, Tom, that you're taking on? It's a massive responsibility, Allison, because if you think about it, we're not only managing hardware and software like we do today with the GPUs and Supreme Ray that we will after closure of the transaction with Viroc. We've got relationships that have been built on years of trust, and we fully intend to honor those. But it also means that we have to maintain the level of support and reliability that Intel customers have come to known while continuing to innovate on top of it. And I think if you look at the combination of this brilliant team that we're going to break over with our brilliant team, I think it's a tremendously winning combination. Yeah, and Alison, this is interesting that you mentioned this story because, yes, for us it was this mixture of different feelings we felt as a team that devoted, you know, like decade to develop that.

technology and the product to hear that there is a possibility of sunseting this, et cetera. But I'm so happy that Intel heard the voice of customers and found a way to basically let this technology still thrive in the world and basically be available to our customers. That's amazing. It's fantastic. Now, Tom, I do have to ask you, where does the DL take great technology as a company? And you're managing a much quality portfolio and ecosystem. What is the long-term vision?

So I love our tagline that the team came up with and that we're inventing the future of storage. With this acquisition of this talent through Vrock and the ability to sell it and improve on it, we're not just adding a new product, right? Anyone can add new products. But what we're doing is we're going to extend our strategic capabilities. We're going to extend our influence in the industry, in the raid business. Suddenly, we're taking two, I don't want to call us DIP players or we're taking two of the smaller players. boy, you put us together, we're a powerhouse, and we are someone to be feared in this business

with the breadth and depth of our offerings to customer. Leather, our founder, he's always had a vision, and the vision was not necessarily to be the only or the best GPU-based raid provider. It was to be the best rate provider in the world, and we want to be that go-to provider for raid regardless of the application or the performance requirements. I think as we head down the road to closing this deal, we're well on our way to realizing Leander's Vision. It's very exciting. And I think this is the kind of deal where you walk away and say,

well, the customers have won. Where do folks go who want to learn more about what comes next? The first place is the press release. And aside from that, until the deal closes, will be, like any transaction like this, will be relatively tight-lipped about product and futures and all that stuff. There are a lot of things to be worked out still, but they can certainly find information post-closure

on Great Technologies website and GreatTech.com. Yes, and also in the meantime, you know, of course, all the contacts that Intel Veroch team has and all the accounts, etc. We are here to leave everyone through this transition and make sure that this is fully interrupted, that we make it as transparently and as cleanly as possible. So anytime our VROC team is here to help and drive the conversation. So just reach us.

Thank you guys so much for bringing this news to Tech Arena. Tom and Yossack, it was a pleasure. I'd luck for both of you to come back at any point. Sure. Look forward to it. Thank you. Thanks for joining Tech Arena. at our website, Techorina.aI. All content is copyright by Tech Arena.