Emerging Vendors 2017: Storage Startups You Need To Know

Storage Startups, Smarter Storage

In the days when storage systems resided within the data center, the only real attributes that mattered were system capacity, input/output capabilities and cost.

Storing data is much more complicated today with data being stored in on-premise and cloud systems; in primary storage, archival storage, and backup and recovery systems; and in private, public and hybrid cloud systems. The challenge for IT today is tracking, managing, securing and providing access to all that data.

Oh, and the volumes of data continue to grow exponentially, by the way.

The focus of storage technology startups today isn't just on providing ways to store more data (although that's still part of it), but also on providing smarter ways to store data.

Here's a look at 30 emerging vendors in the storage arena that the channel should be aware of.

Archive360

Founded: 2011

Top Executive: Robert DeSteno, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=170

Archive360 delivers data migration, storage and management systems for the Microsoft cloud. Archive360 has securely migrated tens-of-petabytes into the Microsoft cloud at high speeds with verifiable data-fidelity and legally defensible chain-of-custody. Archive360's Archive2Azure system is a leading compliance and unstructured data storage and management solution for the Microsoft Azure platform.

Cirrus Data Solutions

Founded: 2011

Top Executive: Wayne Lam, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=171

Cirrus Data Solutions is a privately held developer of enterprise-class technology solutions for automated data management and optimization. The company develops market-leading solutions such as the Data Migration Server and Data Caching Server—each of which installs within minutes for fast, simple, uninterrupted data management with zero downtime.

ClearSky Data

Founded: 2014

Top Executive: Ellen Rubin, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=172

ClearSky Data delivers on-demand primary storage with offsite backup and data recovery as a single service. ClearSky's hybrid cloud storage service brings together the performance and security of on-premises storage with the elasticity and economics of the cloud.

CloudEndure

Founded: 2012

Top Executive: Ofer Gadish, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=173

CloudEndure transforms live workload mobility, enabling businesses to replicate, migrate and recover machines, along with their storage and applications, to and across cloud systems without downtime or data loss. By leveraging the cloud, CloudEndure eliminates the need for duplicate provisioning of resources and provides customers with cost-effective, enterprise-grade disaster recovery.

Cloudian Inc.

Founded: 2011

Top Executive: Michael Tso, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=174

Cloudian turns information into insight with an infinitely scalable storage platform that consolidates, manages and protects enterprise data. Cloudian Enterprise Object Storage brings cloud technology and economics to the data center with data durability, intuitive management tools and an AWS S3 API.

Cloudistics

Founded: 2013

Top Executive: Najaf Husain, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=175

Cloudistics is an enterprise hybrid cloud system developer computing whose software-defined technology converges storage, compute, networking, virtualization and management into a single platform. The vendor's elastic all-flash storage block, driven by the company's storage virtualization software, simplifies storage management and delivers throughput of 4GBps and 200,000 IOPs.

Cohesity

Founded: 2013

Top Executive: Mohit Aron, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=176

Cohesity consolidates inefficient secondary storage silos into a hyper-converged, web-scale data platform for enterprises, which seamlessly spans on-premise data centers, public clouds and remote offices. With Cohesity, customers can efficiently manage their growing secondary data, which typically comprises 80 percent of their total data assets, at a fraction of current costs.

Datera

Founded: 2013

Top Executive: Marc Fleischmann, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=177

Datera exited stealth mode in 2016 with intelligent data infrastructure technology that provides elastic block storage for private cloud infrastructures. The company's software works across any x86 server or can be purchased as part of a complete all-flash or hybrid-flash appliance.

Datos IO

Founded: 2014

Top Executive: Tarun Thakur, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=178

Datos IO provides an application-centric data management platform that helps businesses protect, mobilize and monetize their data across private, public and hybrid cloud environments. The company launched its Rebellion Partner Program in July to support its growing base of resellers.

Datrium

Founded: 2012

Top Executive: Brian Biles, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=179

Datrium provides converged infrastructure systems, including high-performance primary storage and cloud backup systems, for hybrid clouds. In October the company launched the next generation of its DVX appliances featuring end-to-end flash storage systems. The company was founded by executives from Data Domain and early principal engineers from VMware.

Diamanti

Founded: 2014

Top Executive: Jeff Chou, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=180

Diamanti offers a hyper-converged storage and networking appliance used to move containerized applications from development to production. The system eliminates the input/output storage and networking bottlenecks and other challenges that containers pose to traditional IT systems.

E8 Storage

Founded: 2014

Top Executive: Zivan Ori, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=181

E8 Storage develops high-performance, low-latency flash storage systems and storage management software. The company's systems, including the recently debuted E8-X24 centralized NVMe appliance, targets mission-critical applications such as financial trading, real-time analytics and web-based services. The company launched its inaugural channel partner program in June.

Elastifile

Founded: 2013

Top Executive: Amir Aharoni, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=182

The Elastifile Cloud File System is a cross-cloud data fabric software product that provides unified access to file, object and block data stored in on-premise, cloud, virtualized and bare metal stack systems. On Nov. 2 Elastifile said it is integrating its software with Dell EMC servers to create a set of scale-out NAS storage appliances.

Excelero Storage

Founded: 2014

Top Executive: Lior Gal, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=183

Excelero enables enterprises and service providers to design scale-out storage infrastructures that leverage standard servers and high-performance flash storage. Excelero's software-defined block storage solution, NVMesh, meets the performance and scalability requirements of the largest web-scale and enterprise applications.

Hedvig

Founded: 2012

Top Executive: Avinash Lakshman, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=184

Hedvig develops software-defined storage technology for enterprises building private, hybrid or multi-cloud environments. The Hedvig Distributed Storage Platform is designed for both primary and secondary data, making it available for virtualized, containerized and backup workloads. It consolidates block, file, and object data into a single, API-driven platform.

Igneous Systems Inc.

Founded: 2013

Top Executive: Kiran Bhageshpur, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=185

Igneous Systems designed its secondary storage technology to provide consolidated backup and archiving for massive file systems. Its hybrid cloud services – Igneous Storage, Igneous Backup and Igneous Archive – offer the convenience of on-premise data in enterprise datacenters and the agility of public cloud.

ioFabric

Founded: 2013

Top Executive: Steven Lamb, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=188

ioFabric Vicinity is a multi-site, multi-cloud data fabric that ensures data protection and availability with industry-unique cost optimization features. Recently launched Vicinity 3.0 uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate storage cost optimization. ioFabric is targeting channel partners in North America, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.

Infinidat

Founded: 2011

Top Executive: Moshe Yanai, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=186

Infinidat develops the petabyte-scale, all-flash InfiniBox data storage systems, which the company said provides sub-millisecond latency, high reliability and hyper-scale capacity at lower total cost of ownership than traditional storage technologies. In October the company raised $95 million in Series C funding, bringing the startup's valuation to $1.6 billion.

Infrascale

Founded: 2011

Top Executive: Ken Shaw, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=187

With the goal of eradicating downtime and data loss, Infrascale offers cloud-based backup and disaster recovery services providing automatic failover and recovery for data, applications, sites and systems including servers, desktops and laptops. Earlier this year Infrascale added support for the Google Cloud Platform to its lineup, which already supported Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

IT Glue

Founded: 2013

Top Executive: Chris Day, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=189

IT Glue develops a documentation platform that managed service providers use to store and organize client information, helping MSPs increase the efficiency of their technicians and improve both customer satisfaction and profit margins.

pCloud

Founded: 2013

Top Executive: Tunio Zafer, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=190

Pitching itself as an alternative to Dropbox and other cloud storage sites, pCloud provides a cloud-based storage service for both individuals and businesses with synchronization, security and encryption, file sharing and backup capabilities.

Primary Data

Founded: 2013

Top Executive: Lance Smith, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=191

Primary Data's DataSphere platform is used to ensure data is in the right place across enterprise IT systems and the cloud. By separating the logical view of data from physical storage systems, the DataSphere metadata engine allows data to be placed where it's most needed, giving applications the ability to access data in parallel across multiple storage systems.

Qumolo

Founded: 2012

Top Executive: Bill Richter, president and CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=192

In September Qumolo launched its "file fabric" (QF2) software, a highly scalable file storage system that provides the ability to store, manage and access globally distributed data sets, creating a single file domain that spans the data center and the cloud.

Rubrik

Founded: 2014

Top Executive: Bipul Sinha, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=193

Rubrik's cloud data management system provides automated backup and recovery, replication, data archiving, cloud search and development in a platform built for hybrid cloud systems. In August the company launched its Service Delivery Partner program enabling MSPs and other partners to provide clients with a complete suite of automated data management services.

SoftNAS

Founded: 2012

Top Executive: Rick Braddy, CEO and CTO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=194

SoftNAS develops a software-defined cloud data platform that creates a unified, integrated way to aggregate, transform, protect and store data, and create applications that bridge islands of data scattered across Software-as-a-Service applications. The system supports Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure public clouds and VMware-hosted private clouds.

StorPool Storage

Founded: 2012

Top Executive: Boyan Ivanov, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=195

StorPool develops software-defined storage technology that runs on industry-standard servers, converting them into virtual SAN storage arrays by aggregating the servers' local drives into a shared pool of block storage. That, according to the company, provides an alternative to expensive and inefficient stand-alone storage array systems.

SwiftStack

Founded: 2011

Top Executive: Don Jaworski, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=196

SwiftStack offers hybrid cloud storage software for customers that require universal access to petabytes of unstructured data in a single namespace. Media and entertainment companies, life sciences companies and web-based businesses are among SwiftStack's customers. The company recently updated its software with public cloud archiving, synchronization and multi-region data management capabilities.

Symply

Founded: 2015

Top Executive: Alex Grossman, President, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=197

Symply develops high-speed digital storage systems designed for media professionals. The company's products include the SymplyUltra platform, which combines the company's management software with Quantum's StorNext storage system, and the SymplyConveyor high-speed file transfer and sync application. The company recently introduced digital storage products specifically for news bureaus and sports organizations.

Wasabi Technologies

Founded: 2015

Top Executive: David Friend, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=198

Boldly competing with Amazon Web Services, Wasabi Technologies provides cloud storage services that it touts as being six times faster than AWS S3 at one-fifth the cost. Along with its price and performance advantages, Wasabi also trumpets the data protection capabilities of its service against accidental or malicious destruction, and against theft by hackers.

Zadara Storage

Founded: 2011

Top Executive: Nelson Nahum, CEO

Emerging vendor details: /rankings-and-lists/ev2017-details.htm?c=199

Zadara Storage offers enterprise-class block, file and object storage with an agile, Storage-as-a-Service business model. The technology creates a unified experience across public cloud providers, on-premise deployments and hybrid configurations. Zadara's patented technology connects the robust features and security of enterprise storage with the flexibility and economics of the cloud.