IMT Uses Years Of Storage Experience To Build Intelligent Data Mover

Solution provider Integrated Media Technologies has expanded its business with the introduction of its first self-designed software application, SoDA, and enterprise software application the company claims streamlines the process of intelligent data transfers to and from public clouds.

Integrated Media Technologies, or IMT, was founded in 2007, and has been a systems integrator and MSP with a solid focus on the storage business, said Jason Kranitz, president of the North Hollywood, Calif.-based company.

The company has over 800 customers and last year sold over 500 petabytes of storage capacity, mainly in the media and entertainment and video collaboration businesses, Kranitz told CRN.

[Related: Falken Tire Partner IMT Builds Data Center From Ground Up]

IMT was ranked number 205 on CRN‘s 2020 Solution Provider 500 list, and is also a member of CRN’s 2020 Tech Elite 250 list.

A couple years ago, IMT started doing R&D on data movement that culminated in the release of SoDA, Kranitz said.

“We saw a gap between primary and secondary storage, and decided we needed an intelligent data mover,” he said.

Brian Morsch, senior vice president of sales for software at IMT, called SoDA a new way to seamlessly manage and automate data from on-premises to the cloud while delivering actional insight into the operating expenses related to storage and cloud services.

SoDA is a subscription-based offering that provides real-time insights as customers move date into or out of the cloud, Morsch told CRN.

“We allow unlimited data movement between on-prem and the cloud,” he said. ”Once a customer is locked into a monthly charge, there are no extra charges.”

In its 13 years as a solution provider, IMT has not seen anything on the market that does what SoDA can, Kranitz said.

“Large storage and solutions providers have their own proprietary storage,” he said. ”We saw the opportunity to do this for heterogeneous storage.”

Greg Holick, vice president of products for IMT, said customers of SoDA are getting just the unlimited data movement. Those customers pay for their own capacity usage and other services for cloud storage, but with SoDA no longer have to pay egress or related fees to the cloud providers.

Morsch said that most cloud data movement is paid for based on the capacity of the data. Moving one petabyte of data might cost a customer $150,000, while the second petabyte might cost another $150,000.

“The cloud is tricky,” he said. ”When a customer pulls data back from the cloud, they are surprised to see the bill. We make software that ensures customers know the cost ahead of time. There‘s no hidden costs.”

Subscription pricing is based primarily on the number of installation instances, and includes unlimited cloud data migration without regard to the amount of data moved, Kranitz said. However, he declined to provide details of the actual licensing costs.

Holick said SoDA also provides multiple users and groups, make it possible for customers to do charge-back for internal users.

“We provide the insight so the customer knows who is using the software and see where the costs go,” he said. ”We also track overall cloud spend so customers know their cloud capacities and what is stored where. And we include on-prem statistics as well.”

For now, IMT is focused on selling SoDA to its own storage customer base, Morsch said. However, it is already having conversations with other solution providers, OEMs, and distributors about building a channel for the business, he said.

SoDA is the first product from IMT‘s new software division, Holick said. That software division is currently focused on adding new multi-cloud and multi-site capabilities to SoDA, he said.