Two companies in slightly different markets -- Cloudian & Datos IO -- are launching partner programs to address the increasingly complex world of data management.
On the storage side of things, Cloudian unveiled its partner program this week .The company’s Data Management Partners Program focuses on unstructured data growth challenges and opportunities. Charter program members Rubrik, Komprise, Evolphin, and CTERA Networks.
Unstructured data is information that doesn’t have a pre-defined data model or isn’t organized in a pre-defined way. "Unstructured data is so pervasive, it consumes 80 percent of the capacity deployed today," Jon Toor, CMO, Claudian, tells ChannelE2E.
He says it's easier to think of the opposite: Structured data. "That’s the information managed by database apps like Oracle. Unstructured data is everything else. That includes media clips, backup data, scientific data, images, user files from Windows apps, et cetera. Unstructured data is growing over 50 percent annually, so it’s massive and getting more so."
That fact that it’s so difficult to define while consisting of information vital to many businesses’ operations makes it a pressing problem for partners. According to a Gartner’s Cool Vendors in Storage Technologies report, “Infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders have identified 'managing data growth to support business demands' as the top storage concern for 2017.”
Cloudian’s Partner Program
According to San Mateo, California-based Cloudian, its latest solution addresses data center capacity storage solutions by consolidating “multiple data silos into a single, infinitely scalable environment,” with an eye to simplifying operations and reducing costs.
"Traditional storage has run out of gas when it comes to capacity growth," says Toor. "The irony is that for the last five years, the industry has been focused mostly on storage performance. All-flash systems are great for speed, but they do not address the capacity problem, either from a cost or management workload perspective."
"Object storage is now catching on fast. Our customer list has grown 100 percent in the last 12 months. Why? Because object storage finally fixes the capacity problem. It’s two-thirds less cost and infinitely scalable."
To that end, through Cloudian’s relationships, it’s able to deal with a number of data use cases. Its relationship with Rubrik handles data protection. Komprise and Cloudian together tackle data lifecycle management “with solutions that offload non-critical data that is typically 70%+ of the footprint from costly Tier-1 NAS to a limitless scalable storage pool,” the company says. Media active archiving is dealt with alongside Evolphin to address capacity-intensive formats like 4k and VR/360. And finally, file sync and share is run through CTERA Networks with its collaboration tools.
Toor is excited by the prospect of bringing all these companies together to solve one problem. "Sure, IT managers can piece together solutions on their own, but that can be risky," he says. "If the solution doesn’t work, who gets the blame?"
"This program is 100 percent proven solutions. All are deployed, with customers, in live production data centers, right now. They solve real capacity management problems and do not create new problems along the way."
Datos IO's Partner Program
Meanwhile, San Jose, California’s Datos IO set its sights on the protection issue with the launch of its Rebellion Partner Program. The program is designed to help enterprise-grade companies protect their data as they respond to digital transformation and migrate their traditional workloads to public cloud environments.
Rather than rely on traditional LUN (logical unit number) or VM (virtual machine) solutions, Datos leverages its its own RecoverX solution. The offering includes what the company bills as “a cloud-first, elastic compute, software only solution that is not dependent on media servers.” The company asserts that the solution is based on a globally distributed metadata catalog that allows for backup and recovery from anywhere.
Datos appears to be in growth mode. The company has doubled its customer base in the first two quarters of this fiscal year. Datos also enjoys 100% renewal rates and expansion within existing Fortune 500 customers, the company says. Still, we don't know actual revenue or profit figures.
Customers like eBay, Barracuda Networks, Maxwell Health, Ayla Networks and Cisco use Datos’ RecoverX solution.
