Emerging Vendors 2014: Storage Vendors

Storage Superstars

Each year in our Emerging Vendors list, CRN looks at the tech startups making their presence known in the industry. Each company on the list also has an all-important quality: It has demonstrated that it understands the value of the channel. Here we look at the emerging players in the storage industry, those that are blazing a trail through innovative online backup services, NAS and SAN appliances, flash storage systems, unique cloud storage platforms, virtualized storage technology and much more.

Actifio

Waltham, Mass.

Top Executive: Founder, CEO Ash Ashutosh

Fast-growing Actifio developed a copy data management platform that eliminates the problem of "data sprawl" by creating a single copy of an organization's production data and making it virtually available for backup, disaster recovery, software development and testing, business analytics and archiving purposes.

Amplidata

Milpitas, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Mike Wall

Amplidata develops the Amplistor object-based storage technology for storing hundreds of petabytes of data at half the cost of RAID-based storage systems. In June Amplidata debuted its next-generation storage management software, based on its Himalaya architecture, for cloud service providers, OEMs and enterprises.

Avere Systems

Pittsburgh

Top Executive: President, CEO Ron Bianchini

Avere builds high-performance, network-attached storage for hybrid cloud systems that automatically tier customers' data, storing the most-accessed data on filers and less-active data on other NAS appliances. Earlier this month the company raised $20 million in Series D financing.

Backupify

Cambridge, Mass.

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Rob May

Backupify provides cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solutions for Software-as-a-Service applications such as Salesforce.com. In April the company unveiled plans to expand support to Box, NetSuite, Dropbox, Office 365, Zendesk and others.

BridgeStor

Poway, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO John Matze

Vowing to eliminate the need for backup software, BridgeStor develops technology that makes it easier for organizations to access cloud-based data. Its Cloud Storage File System transforms complex, object-based cloud storage into traditional file-based storage accessible by standard Windows and Linux applications and management tools.

BUMI

New York

Top Executive: President Jennifer Walzer

BUMI (for "backup my info") provides managed online backup and recovery solutions for SMBs. Partners can acquire BUMI technology as software to create a private backup and recovery cloud, a solution using BUMI's data centers or a hybrid solution.

Ciphertex Data Security

Chatsworth, Calif.

Top Executive: Founder, President Jerry Kaner

Ciphertex markets secure, portable data storage systems that incorporate advanced hardware encryption technology. The company's direct-attached storage and network-attached storage systems provide high levels of performance, security and reliability for such markets as government and health care.

CloudByte

Campbell, Calif.

Top Executive: Founder, CEO, CTO Felix Xavier

CloudByte positions itself as an alternative to expensive legacy SAN systems. Its ElastiStor operating system combined with its hardware appliance allows any size organization to deploy a secure cloud storage system for multi-application environments.

Cobalt Iron

Lawrence, Kan.

Top Executive: Founder, CEO Richard Spurlock

Cobalt Iron offers a suite of data protection and recovery services. Its Cobalt Iron Data Protection Portfolio can be installed on-premise with Cobalt Iron Vault appliances and/or in public or private clouds, or as part of a hosted solution.

Coho Data

Sunnyvale, Calif.

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Ramana Jonnala

Founded by Xensource/Citrix and storage industry veterans, Coho offers the DataStream Storage System for organizations building large "Web-scale" private clouds. In March the company launched the DataStream 1000 that combines commodity hardware with the vendor's software to deliver storage at a price/performance better than all-flash systems.

Ctera Networks

New York

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Liran Eshel

Ctera Networks is a cloud storage and data protection hardware and software company that specializes in cloud storage gateways. Earlier this month the company closed on a $25 million Series C financing round.

Exablox

Sunnyvale, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Doug Brockett

Exablox is a developer of on-premise storage arrays with cloud management capabilities for midrange customers. In May the company introduced its first official channel program as part of a move to expand its reach into the midsize customer storage market.

Genie9

Burlington, Mass.

Top Executive: CEO Muayyad Shehadeh

Genie9 develops data storage management and disaster recovery services for consumers, SMBs and large businesses. The company's offerings include the Genie Timeline backup solution and Zoolz cloud-based data backup and storage services based on Amazon's low-cost Glacier online file storage service.

Gridstore

Mountain View, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO George Symons

Gridstore develops software-defined storage systems, built on its patented Server-Side Virtual Controller Technology, that are designed to accelerate applications in virtualized environments. Earlier this month the company revealed the integration of Gridstore 3 with Microsoft System Center 2012.

HeroWare

San Clemente, Calif.

Top Executive: President and CEO Bob Erickson

HeroWare markets a number of business continuity, secure backup and disaster recovery appliances, software and cloud services that help businesses meet HIPAA/HITECH requirements. Offerings include the Hero Defender appliance line, Secure-Suite applications and Secure Cloud.

Infinio

Cambridge, Mass.

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Arun Agarwal

Infinio launched its Infinio Accelerator storage performance tools for virtual environments in November. The company recently debuted version 1.2 of the software with support for VMware vSphere 5.5. And in June Scott Davis, a former VMware divisional CTO, joined Infinio as CTO.

Infrascale

El Segundo, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Ken Shaw Jr.

Infrascale is a storage Platform-as-a-Service company with a secure, scalable cloud storage platform that works in both private and public cloud environments. Infrascale's infrastructure solutions include raw cloud storage, backup as a service, archiving as a service, and file server as a service. In June it raised $16.3 in Series B finding.

Kaminario

Newton, Mass.

Top Executive: CEO Dani Golan

All-flash storage array maker Kaminario gave its products an enterprise edge in May when it debuted Kaminario K2 v5 with new capabilities for enterprise data services, while also offering a cost-effective solution for midsize companies.

Maginatics

Mountain View, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Amarjit Gill

Maginatics develops a software-only data storage platform designed for software-defined data centers and cloud providers. The technology migrates workloads and corresponding data into the cloud without the need to modify applications or data sets. That offers a way to replace or consolidate traditional NAS appliances into public, private or hybrid clouds.

Maxta

Sunnyvale, Calif.

Top Executive: Founder, CEO Yoram Novick

The converged infrastructure technology developer entered the market in late 2013 with its Maxta Storage Platform, a software-only virtual storage technology that leverages a server's own storage and -- according to Maxta -- eliminates the need for storage arrays in virtualized data centers.

Mezeo Software

Houston

Top Executive: President, CEO Steve Lesem

Mezeo Software provides cloud storage services via its MezeoCloud platform, which enables implementation of public, private or hybrid cloud storage in conjunction with such partners as eFolder and Artisan Infrastructure. Channel partners can brand MezeoCloud as their own cloud storage solution.

Nakivo

Campbell, Calif.

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Bruce Talley

Nakivo develops data protection products for VMware virtualized environments. The company's backup and replication software enables small businesses to protect, encrypt, compress and de-duplicate data both on-site with local storage and off-site with public clouds such as Amazon Web Services.

Nasuni

Natick, Mass.

Top Executive: Founder, CEO Andres Rodriguez

Nasuni offers technology that virtualizes data storage infrastructure and delivers it as a service via public clouds. Last month Nasuni won a patent for its multisite access technology for connecting to a single namespace in the cloud from any number of locations.

Nexenta Systems

Santa Clara, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Tarkan Maner

Nexenta's software-defined data storage products include the NexentaStor appliance that works with virtualized servers, and NexentaConnect that optimizes virtual desktop infrastructure deployments on legacy shared storage or converged infrastructure. The company sells exclusively through the channel.

Nimble Storage

San Jose, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Suresh Vasudevan

In June, Nimble Storage introduced its Adaptive Flash solutions, which included the CS700 Series arrays and an All-Flash Shelf that is capable of supporting a petabyte of capacity.

Parsec Labs

Minneapolis

Top Executive: CEO Walter Angerer

Startup Parsec Labs is developing storage virtualization technology for network-attached storage systems. The company has said the technology will accelerate data access to existing NAS systems while adding compression and de-duplication to reduce storage capacity by about 60 percent.

Primary Data

Salt Lake City

Top Executive: CEO David Flynn

Primary Data remains largely in stealth mode as it develops what it describes as next-generation data virtualization and mobility technologies to manage how information is stored and shared globally. The startup closed on $50 million in funding in October.

Pure Storage

Mountain View, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Scott Dietzen

All-flash storage array developer Pure Storage in May expanded its enterprise-class FlashArray 400 Series with new entry-level and high-capacity arrays. The vendor also released Purity 4.0, the next generation of its Purity Operating Environment.

Savage IO

Batavia, N.Y.

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Phillip Roberto

Savage IO develops high-capacity converged data storage systems, including its DataBrick system, an alternative to legacy storage systems that combine server, storage and network capabilities.

Skyera

San Jose, Calif.

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Radoslav Danilak

Skyera develops enterprise all-solid-state storage systems. The company's storage arrays take advantage of the most advanced NAND flash technology that delivers high-capacity and low-power consumption with flash-optimized enterprise software features.

Storiant

Boston

Top Executive: CEO Jeff Flowers

Storiant, previously known as SageCloud, develops "cold storage" technology that provides a low-cost way to handle storage tiering, archival, backup and compliance data with a single solution as a way to manage data growth and provide big data analytics. The company says it reduces the cost of storing petabytes of data by as much as 90 percent.

SwiftStack

San Francisco

Top Executive: CEO Joe Arnold

SwiftStack is a startup developer of software-defined storage technology based on the OpenStack Object Storage project (code-named "Swift"). In June the company launched SwiftStack 2.0 for object storage that's designed to provide the management, integration and scalability needed to handle massive volumes of data.

Talon

Mt. Laurel, N.J.

Top Executive: CEO Shirish Phatak

Talon provides Microsoft File Aware application acceleration and storage solutions for branch office infrastructure. The company's RemoteFAST flagship product provides customers with the most future-proof investment for today's branch offices, ensuring scalable and reliable application performance along with business collaboration across distributed workforce environments.

Tarmin

Cambridge, Mass.

Top Executive: President, CEO Shahbaz Ali

Tarmin's massively scalable GridBank technology helps organizations store, control and understand the value of data as a competitive business asset, no matter its size, location or cost by uniting application, information and storage tiers into a single, integrated data centric management architecture.

Tegile Systems

Newark, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Rohit Kshetrapal

Tegile Systems develops its IntelliFlash hybrid flash and all-flash storage array systems purpose-built to deliver optimized storage performance for various application workloads including server virtualization, virtual desktops, online transaction processing and real-time analytics.

Tintri

Mountain View, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Ken Klein

Tintri builds hybrid flash and disk storage appliances that handle hundreds of VMware VMs and their data storage in a single device, appearing to a server like a direct-attached storage array. The application-aware storage eliminates planning and complex troubleshooting by providing VM-level visibility, control, insight and agility.

Zadara Storage

Irvine, Calif.

Top Executive: Co-Founder, CEO Nelson Nahum

Zadara Storage develops enterprise Storage-as-a-Service technology, delivering file and block storage capabilities through a pay-as-you-go model for on-premise deployment and for global service providers. Its services are based on its patent-pending, software-defined Virtual Private Storage Arrays technology.

Zetta.net

Sunnyvale, Calif.

Top Executive: CEO Ali Jenab

Zetta.net provides enterprise cloud backup, disaster recovery and archiving services for SMBs and MSPs. Its flagship DataProtect provides cloud-based backups, replication of data with built-in WAN optimization, and snapshots that can be rolled back to earlier versions of stored data.