10 Emerging Storage Vendors You Need To Know About
Speeds And Feeds
Traditionally, data storage has been all about capacity -- how many terabytes, petabytes, even exabytes, can I squeeze into that system? But, today, speed and performance have become as important as capacity, if not more so, and that's led to booming sales of flash storage and hyper-converged systems.
And that's why the storage technology arena has recently been one of the most active segments of the IT industry. Some like Pure Storage have been around for a while and attracted a lot of attention -- and a lot of venture funding. Others are just getting out of the starter's block.
Here's a look at 10 emerging vendors in the storage arena that you should be aware of.
Cohesity
Santa Clara, Calif.
Top Executive: CEO Mohit Aron
Storage startup Cohesity exited stealth mode in June with $70 million in venture financing and unveiled the availability of its first data storage system.
That system, the Cohesity Data Platform, is an infinitely scalable converged platform that provides a full range of integrated data-protection services, including storage of backup and archival data, and cloud connectivity. Data can be easily cloned for test and development. It also includes an integrated data analytics software application and allows integration with customers' choice of application.
DataGravity
Nashua, N.H.
Top Executive: CEO Paula Long
After several years of development, DataGravity exited stealth in 2014 with its "data-aware" Discovery Series storage systems that help IT managers and line-of-business users store, protect, search and govern their data. At the core of the system is the DataGravity Engine that analyzes data as it's ingested.
The company sells exclusively through the channel and recruits solution providers to its DataGravity Partner Network.
Hedvig
Santa Clara, Calif.
Top Executive: CEO Avinash Lakshman
Hedvig exited stealth mode in March with the introduction of a software-defined storage system the company said not only breaks the tie between storage software and hardware but also provides the widest range of storage services.
The Hedvig Distributed Storage Platform, based on software-defined storage technology, provides a level of abstraction that lets compute platforms consume storage regardless of whether it is file, block or object storage. It provides a wide range of services, including replication, disaster recovery, compression and de-duplication.
Infinidat
Herzliya, Israel
Top Executive: CEO Moshe Yanai
Infinidat, whose founding team developed EMC's Symmetrix and IBM's XIV enterprise storage solutions, formally unveiled its InfiniBox storage in April, a product that its developers called the first to offer unified block, file, object and mainframe storage.
The InfiniBox is a high-density, high-performance storage system the company said offers low-power consumption and costs less on a per-gigabyte basis than other enterprise-class storage. It provides over 750,000 IOPS performance, with more than 12 GBps of throughput. And it does so with seven nines, or 99.99999 percent, uptime, which translates to less than 3 seconds of planned or unplanned downtime per year.
Infrascale
El Segundo, Calif.
Top Executive: CEO Ken Shaw
Infrascale calls itself the complete data-protection platform for enterprises and MSPs. The startup offers hybrid cloud business continuity and IT disaster recovery management systems that deliver backup, disaster-recovery, file-sharing and data-archiving services with military-grade security. The systems protect physical and virtual servers, workstations and even mobile devices.
Infrascale's sales grew 50 percent in 2014, and as of early this year the company had more than 1,000 solution provider partners with 250,000 customer companies.
Nasuni
Natick, Mass.
Top Executive: President and CEO Andres Rodriguez
Nasuni provides cloud network-attached storage (NAS) systems that combine on-premise hardware and software with cloud storage running on Microsoft Azure. The company said its products cost 40 percent less than typical NAS and data-protection systems.
Nasuni follows a 100 percent channel model with its Nasuni Partner Connect program. In May, the company won a Codie Award for best cloud infrastructure from the Software & Information Industry Association.
Qumulo
Seattle
Top Executive: CEO Peter Godman
Qumulo came out of stealth in March with a system for data-aware, scale-out NAS. Qumulo, whose founding team includes some of the top folks behind Isilon, the scale-out NAS vendor acquired by EMC in 2010, has already received $67 million in financing. The company develops software that can be deployed on commodity servers to deliver information on millions of files stored in file format.
Qumulo's claim to fame is the data awareness its technology offers. Qumulo's file system has an integrated database that has the ability to answer any questions about what is stored without needing to scan the data for metadata that must be separately stored and managed.
Rubrik
Palo Alto, Calif.
Top Executive: CEO Bipul Sinha
Data protection software developer Rubrik in March announced a $41 million round of funding just three months after coming out of stealth. The startup also released its first appliance aimed at helping customers easily take advantage of a scalable hybrid cloud model for backing up and recovering data.
Rubrik's Rubrik r300 is a hardware appliance that ties the company's data protection software with an industry-standard server to offer a scale-out solution for keeping a company up and running in case of data loss.
Saratoga Speed
San Jose, Calif.
Top Executive: CEO Sharad Mehrotra
Saratoga Speed builds next-generation, all-flash storage arrays that the company said offer extreme capacity and extreme performance. The systems combine the extensibility of an Intel/Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform with purpose-built hardware to accelerate flash storage.
The company's array systems are targeted for high-performance block storage and file systems, and can be used to host high-performance databases and applications. Saratoga Speed's go-to-market strategy is primarily channel-oriented, and the startup is actively recruiting solution provider partners.
SolidFire
Boulder, Colo.
Top Executive: CEO Dave Wright
SolidFire manufactures scale-out, all-flash storage systems designed for next-generation data centers. The systems deliver high performance for applications in multitenant environments, such as those delivered by cloud service providers.
In June, SolidFire added new specialization tiers to its Cloud Builder Partner Program that recognize partner expertise in such areas as virtualization, OpenStack, Agile infrastructure and "master cloud builder." Partners include resellers, systems integrators and distributors.