Placing Bets On The Future Of Storage

The Quantum of 2020 is nothing like the Quantum of just 10 years ago. The San Jose, Calif.-based storage vendor has moved well beyond its backup tape roots to become a leading provider of file and object storage, NVMe-based storage technology, and offerings aimed at helping a wide range of businesses and government institutions develop technology to meet the growing requirement for archiving data for 100 years and beyond.

Like most technology companies, 2020 has been a challenging year. Quantum saw its revenue drop after the start of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic as enterprises and the media and entertainment industry both took hits. But since May, the company has seen its fortunes recover, said Quantum President and CEO Jamie Lerner.

Lerner, speaking with CRN recently in an exclusive interview, said the worst of the pandemic impact is behind Quantum, leaving it ready to continue building on future storage technologies.

“We’re seeing growth in government, in health care, in cloud. In multiple areas around health care and bio-informatics, genetics, research, and more medical imagery or hospital-related activities,” Lerner said. “We’re seeing a lot of growth in those areas, and we’re starting to see a pulse in media and entertainment again with some amount of television and movie productions starting again.”

Here’s a look at the data archiving and data management technologies so important to Quantum’s future, and a peek at the company’s soon-to-be-unveiled StorNext 7 scalable file system.