Cloud Hosting

As part of CRNs 2024 Storage 100, here are 50 vendors bringing software capabilities, services and cloud connectivity to storage technology.

The base of nearly any storage system is hardware. But look closely at the hardware, and a distinct pattern appears: The hardware is likely to be an industry-standard server with industry-standard processors, industry-standard storage media and industry-standard memory.

The real value of storage systems, with few exceptions, lies in their software, not their hardware. Software is where the services provided by storage systemsthe ability to store and manage and protect primary and secondary datais provided. For this reason, storage system vendors typically have much larger software engineering teams than they do teams focused on hardware. Software teams define the value of storage.

For this reason, the list of the 50 coolest software-defined storage vendors includes companies ranging from the smallest providers to the likes of NetApp and Dell. They are well-recognized as hardware vendors. However, the list also includes providers of cloud storage where the end customers may not even touch hardware. All these companies are united by the fact that software does indeed define the storage.

As part of CRNs 2024 Storage 100, here are 50 vendors bringing software capabilities, services and cloud connectivity to storage technology.

Advanced Computer & Network Corp.

Gene Leyzarovich

President, CEO

AC&NC provides a wide range of data storage, data protection and data management for NAS, SAN, cloud and hyper-converged infrastructure deployments, as well as storage expansion, servers, switches and adapters to build complete systems. The company also pairs its all-flash and hybrid systems with third-party offerings such as CyberFortress to add data protection and security.

Amax Information Technologies

Jean Shih

President

Amax is a vertically integrated infrastructure manufacture with a focus on server, workstation and storage technologies under its own brand and on an OEM basis. Amax, which in late 2023 held its IPO on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, last year expanded its capabilities with new liquid and immersion cooling technology and the latest Nvidia GPUs.

Broadcom

Hock Tan

President, CEO

As if Broadcom was already not a big enough developer of storage technologiesthanks to multiple acquisitions it produces a wide range of storage adapters, controllers, ICs, and storage networking equipmentthe company in 2023 became a leader in software-defined storage technology with its massive acquisition of VMware from former parent company Dell Technologies.

Cloudian

Michael Tso

Co-Founder, CEO

Cloudian specializes in the development of Amazon S3-compatible object storage systems aimed at managing the complicated unstructured data requirements of a wide range of businesses. It does so via its HyperStore object storage platform, as well as its HyperStore File Services for capacity-intensive, less frequently used files. The company also offers observability and analytics and load-balancing technologies.

Croit

Martin Verges

CEO

Croit develops storage software appliances based on the open-source Red Hat Ceph technology to provide unified, software-defined, scale-out storage that works with block, file and object formats at a low cost per Gigabyte. The company late last year also started providing storage software appliances using the Intel DAOS technology to provide low-latency storage for high-performance environments.

Ctera Networks

Oded Nagel

CEO

Ctera provides technology for secure file services via a platform that manages enterprises file storage, control and governance requirements. The Ctera Enterprise File Services Platform unifies endpoint, branch office and cloud file services via a cloud-native global file system to enable multi-cloud data management with full control over data residency, security and edge-to-cloud acceleration.

DataCore

Dave Zabrowski

CEO

Datacore is one of the pioneers in software-defined storage, offering its storage technology in software-only form for use with customers own hardware platforms. The company most recently extended its software-defined object storage capabilities to the edge via its Agile Containerized Deployments and introduced SANsymphony Adaptive Data Placement for automatic tiering.

DDN

Alex Bouzari

Chairman, Co-Founder, CEO

DDN, the worlds largest privately held storage vendor, develops a comprehensive portfolio of storage systems targeting data-intensive workflows across on-premises and cloud infrastructures for use cases in oil and gas, supercomputing, AI, financial services, manufacturing, telecom and more. DDN in November unveiled DDN Infinia, which provides multitenancy, containerization and performance aimed primarily at accelerated computing for generative AI.

Dell Technologies

Michael Dell

Founder, Chairman, CEO

Dell remains the worlds largest storage vendor thanks to multiple acquisitions, but it is not resting on its laurels. The company is plunging head-first into as-a-service and subscription storage via its Dell Apex portfolio with elastic file, block and backup storage services. The companys PowerScale storage systems in November were validated on Nvidia DGX SuperPod for AI storage.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Antonio Neri

President, CEO

HPE has been the second-largest storage vendor for years, primarily on the strength of its HPE Alletra portfolio. Alletra is the center of its HPE GreenLake cloud and as-a-service offerings, including moves in early 2024 to introduce HPE GreenLake services for block storage and file storage. The company in November also unveiled a collaboration with Nvidia for GenAI.

Hitachi Vantara

Sheila Rohra

CEO

Hitachi Vantara, which in 2017 was formed by the combination of Hitachi Data Systems storage and data center infrastructure, Hitachi Insight IoT, and Pentaho big data businesses, reorganized again last November to focus on its block, file, object, mainframe, and software-defined storage and hybrid cloud-centric data infrastructure services portfolios. The company also has a leading storage virtualization technology.

Huawei

Zhengfei Ren

Director, CEO

China-based Huawei remains one of the worlds largest producers of storage systems despite having virtually no U.S. market share due to concerns about alleged China government ties. Huawei late 2023 introduced two new all-flash arrays, including the OceanStor Pacific 9920 scale-out array with up to 768-TB capacity in 2U, and the OceanStor Dorado 2100 all-flash active-active NAS system.

IBM

Arvind Krishna

Chairman, CEO

IBM develops a wide range of storage hardware, software and software-defined storage aimed at general storage, AI, hybrid cloud and data resilience requirements, much of which starting last year has been integrated with open source Ceph technologies from IBMs Red Hat acquisition. The company has most recently added several AI-focused storage systems to its line card.

Icedrive

James Bressington

Founder, CEO

IceDrive is a developer of cloud storage designed to look as if attached to a PC. The company provides Web-based, desktop and mobile apps for sharing and collaborating on a customers stored data. Its encrypted cloud storage uses the twofish algorithm, which the company says is more secure than AES.

Impossible Cloud

Kai Wawrzinek

Co-Founder, CEO

Impossible Cloud develops a decentralized cloud storage architecture built on a global network of enterprise-grade data centers. The company says that its architecture provides secure storage for big data, data backups and archives at a lower cost than hyperscalers can offer. With its S3 API compatibility, it integrates with a wide range of cloud storage applications.

Infinidat

Phil Bullinger

CEO

Infinidat develops enterprise-grade storage technology for AIOps and DevOps, data storage, cyber resiliency, data protection and recovery, business continuity and sovereign cloud storage. All of the companys storage capabilities are based on the same fundamental technology foundation that offers high availability, high performance, and low total cost of ownership at multi-petabyte scale.

Ionir

Jacob Cherian

CEO

Ionir develops a Kubernetes-native storage and data management platform the company says adopts to technology changes and evolving customer requirements without the need for forklift upgrades. Its technology lets businesses run any applications wherever and whenever needed without the need to worry about whether the data is there or not.

iXsystems

Mike Lauth

Co-Founder, CEO

iXsystems develops the open-source storage technology behind TrueNAS, which with over 15 million downloads is the worlds most deployed NAS technology, the company says. The TrueNAS platform is based on the ZFS file system, which provides scale-up and scale-out unified storage. iXsystems is a profitable, self-funded company with no outside investors.

Lenovo

Yuanqing Yang

Chairman, CEO

Originally posted here:
The 50 Coolest Software-Defined Storage Vendors: The 2024 Storage 100 - CRN