When Solutions Review was founded in 2012, it was with a simple goal: to report on the latest developments in enterprise technology and make it easier for people to evaluate business software. We then built a collection of vendor-agnostic buyer’s resources to cut through the clutter of content and strip away the marketing hyperbole. 

Solutions Review is organizing the third annual BUDR Insight Jam for the month of December — a one-day community web event dedicated to raising awareness around best practices when evaluating, deploying, and using backup and disaster recovery solutions. Our editors will be sharing tips and expert insights throughout the day to help practitioners plan for the end of the year and prepare for 2022. Solutions Review will also be releasing its new 2022 Buyer’s Guide for Backup and Disaster Recovery platforms so tool-seekers can get a jump start on identifying which solutions best fit their use case.

Join the largest BUDR software buyer and practitioner community

Solutions Review Backup and Disaster Recovery is the largest BUDR software buyer and practitioner community on the web. Our Universe of Influence reach is more than 7 million business and IT decision-makers, as well as C-suite and other top management professionals. Our readers primarily use us as an enterprise technology news source and trusted resource for solving some of their most complex problems.

Our collection of vendor-agnostic buyer’s resources help backup and disaster recovery buyers and practitioners during the research and discovery phase of a buying cycle. This critical stage of information gathering is where buyers narrow down the field of solution providers to a short-list they plan to engage. The mission of Solutions Review is to make it easier for buyers of BUDR software to connect with the best providers.

Why participate in the Solutions Review BUDR Insight Jam?

Wondering what’s in it for you? Join us for the BUDR Insight Jam to get insight on backup and disaster recovery software buying, best practices for piloting new and emerging technologies, and find out what the future will bring. It’s also going to be a top-notch networking event featuring many of the foremost thought leaders in the field.

This forum is a unifying event for all those in the industry, and we welcome industry analysts, experts, influencers, authors, practitioners, solution providers, and end-users to weigh in. Set for Tuesday, December 7, 2021, Solutions Review will be sharing, posting, and tweeting actionable backup and disaster recovery best practices content using the hashtag #BUDRInsightJam. If you are interested in participating, here are a few ways you can be a part of the event:

• Provide us with an audio or video clip with advice to those considering a BUDR solution purchase
• Send us short-form product demos
• Participate in one of our discussion panels (as a speaker or a viewer)
• Use the hashtag #BUDRInsightJam and share helpful content to help build a community space dedicated to this day
• Predictions for 2022; what will next year bring in the space?
• Customer success stories using backup and disaster recovery platforms — be specific!
• General advice for those evaluating backup and disaster recovery tools

For more information on the 2021 Solutions Review BUDR Insight Jam, check out our video explaining it in detail:

How do I submit content for the BUDR Insight Jam?

• Written Content: Email to thanna@solutionsreview.com.
• Video Content: Email to jpaula@solutionsreview.com. 
• Secure your spot on a panel discussion here.
• All content can also be submitted at InsightJam.com. 

The deadline for submissions is November 24th. Stay tuned for details about our other Identity and Access Management, ERP, and Business Intelligence Insight Jams, set to begin on Monday, December 6th, 2021.

About Solutions Review

Solutions Review is a collection of technology news sites that aggregates, curates, and creates the best content within leading technology categories. Solutions Review’s mission is to connect buyers of enterprise technology with the best solution sellers. Over the past seven years, Solutions Review has launched 16 technology buyer’s guides sites in categories ranging from cybersecurity to wireless 802.11 and mobility management, business intelligence and data analytics, data integration, and cloud platforms.

The post Solutions Review Set to Host Third BUDR Insight Jam appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

The editors at Solutions Review highlight what’s changed since the last iteration of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage and provide an analysis of the new report.

Analyst house Gartner, Inc. has released its 2021 Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage. The researcher defines distributed file systems and object storage as “software and hardware platforms that are based on distributed designs and that support object and/or scale-out file system technology to address requirements for unstructured data growth.” The market is based on distributed computing architectures in which there is no single point of failure or contention across the system. These products must have a fully distributed architecture where data and metadata are distributed, replicated, or erasure-coded over the network across multiple nodes in the cluster. 

Because the unstructured data storage market is evolving, new capabilities are necessary to address the growing challenges that come with that evolution. New challenges include exponential data growth, rapid digitalization, and the globalization of business. Storage infrastructure tools, particularly those based on distributed file systems and object storage, are increasing in volume and capacity of deployments as the platform of choice to address the growth of unstructured data in data centers around the world.

End-users have reported unstructured data is increasing more than 30 percent year over year. Because of this, infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders are searching for extensible on-prem storage platforms that can address a growing number of digital business use cases with lower acquisition, operational, and management costs. Features I&O professionals are looking for include scalability, flexibility, life cycle management, ease of management, and analytics insights into data. Recently, users have been requesting cyber-resilient unstructured data solutions to prevent, detect, and recovery from ransomware attacks.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, large enterprises will triple their unstructured data capacity stored as file or object storage on-prem, at the edge, or in the public cloud compared to 2021. Additionally, the research firm expects that 60 percent of the global unstructured data storage capacity will be deployed as software-defined storage (SDS) by 2025, up from less than 25 percent in 2021. It is also expected that new consumption models and procurement offerings will emerge to provide end-users with different ways to purchase storage.

In this Magic Quadrant, Gartner evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of 15 providers that it considers most significant in the marketplace and provides readers with a graph (the Magic Quadrant) plotting the vendors based on their Ability to Execute and their Completeness of Vision. The graph is divided into four quadrants, niche players, challengers, visionaries, and leaders. At Solutions Review, we read the report, available here, and pulled out the key takeaways.

Gartner adjusts its evaluation and inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants as software markets evolve. As a result, Nutanix and Weka were added to this year’s report, while Caringo was dropped. Gartner also occasionally lists honorable mentions that did not meet the inclusion criteria, but are potentially of interest to their clients. This year’s honorable mentions are Cohesity, MinIO, and VAST. Representative vendors in this year’s Magic Quadrant are Cloudian, DDN, Dell Technologies, Hitachi Vantara, Huawei, IBM, Inspur, NetApp, Nutanix, Pure Storage, Quantum, Qumulo, Red Hat, Scality, and Weka.

The leader and visionary sections of the graph are the most crowded this year, both housing five vendors each. Starting with the leaders, Dell Technologies is once again the runaway leader in terms of its ability to execute. The vendor recently added support for larger SSDs and HDDs, S3 access, an external key manager, and object tagging to its Dell EMC ECS offering. Dell’s closest competitor in the leader category is fellow industry giant, IBM. IBM’s placement could be attributed to its acquisition of Red Hat, which expanded its reach into enterprises with cloud-native workloads, including enhanced support for containerized applications and OpenShift in IBM Spectrum Scale.

The remaining leaders, Qumulo, Scality, and Pure Storage are all placed close together in a cluster on the graph. Qumulo’s status may be due to the fact that its public cloud file service integration and hybrid cloud workflow enablement models are well-aligned with the emerging needs of customers. Scality differentiates itself from competitors through its hybrid cloud integration and integrated capability to provide file and object storage in a single solution. Conversely, Pure Storage’s strength lies in its FlashArray business and common management system, which delivers an advantage for customers that want to consolidate vendors across block, file, and object workloads.

This year’s visionaries are NetApp, Nutanix, Quantum, Red Hat, and Weka. Placed closest to the X-axis, NetApp recently added fully managed object storage services in partnership with Equinix. Nutanix’s differentiating features is its rich data analytics tools, which provide monitoring and reporting of abnormal user behavior, performance anomalies, audit trails, and built-in ransomware protection. Placed almost directly on the Y-axis, Quantum integrates a range of technologies, including its StorNext file system, ActiveScale object storage, and tape solutions into a single platform to deliver an eternal archive. 

Weka, a new vendor in this year’s Magic Quadrant, offers multiprotocol capabilities and the ability to extend its file system to the object storage that provides better scalability and cost-efficiency compared to traditional all-flash file systems. Rounding out the visionaries is Red Hat. Over the past year, Red Hat Ceph Storage has added an object lock WORM feature and FIPS 140-2 cryptography and has also expanded key management integration.

This year’s challengers are all placed together in a cluster near the Y-axis of the graph. Cloudian is the closest to the axis. This placement could be because its strategy to focus on backup opportunities for providing S3-compatible storage with Object Lock technology for ransomware protection is an attractive option for users. Hitachi Vantara’s challenger status can be attributed to the fact that the vendor is trusted for its reliability, high availability, and resilient systems. Finally, Huawei potentially earned its challenger placement because it is well-designed to accommodate various unstructured data workloads as a single product for scalable and performant file and object storage services.

The least populous quadrant in this year’s report is the niche player section, which only contains Inspur and DDN. Inspur has experienced rapid growth in customers and managed petabytes in the China and Japan regions because of its product features and position in the server market. DDN’s niche player placement could be attributed to its proven storage solution for HPC and artificial workloads, including enhancements for deployment and integration in GPU environments to support NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD.

Read Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage

The post What’s Changed: 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

The editors at Solutions Review have examined the top vendors in the data storage space and compiled this list of the seven coolest data storage CEOs of 2021.

The chief executive officer (CEO) is at the top of the food chain within an organization. The CEO undertakes many responsibilities, such as developing a strategy and direction and setting the precedent for their business’ principles, conduct, and culture. The chief executive is also responsible for building an executive leadership team and allocating funds to match the company’s goals and priorities. Some CEOs have even more on their plate, whether they are at the head of the top data storage companies or an emerging startup. Sometimes they can be responsible for more than just the traditional duties and can do anything from brewing coffee to marketing their product.

Solutions Review has compiled this list of the seven coolest data storage CEOs based on a number of factors, including the company’s market share, growth trajectory, and the impact each individual has had on its presence in what is becoming the most competitive global software market. Some of the top data storage CEOs have been with their respective companies since day one while others are serial entrepreneurs. But no matter their background, each CEO brings a diversity of skills and a unique perspective to the table that allows their company to thrive. 

The Coolest Data Storage CEOs of 2021

Mohit Aron, Cohesity

Mohit Aron, the CEO and Founder of Cohesity, has more than 15 years of experience in building scalable, high-performance distributed systems, and has been credited with increasing the popularity of hyperconvergence. Aron founded Cohesity in 2013 and co-founded the data storage company, Nutanix, in 2009. Before co-founding Nutanix, Aron worked at Google as a lead developer on the Google File System engineering project. Aron’s success is evident, as shown by the World Economic Forum (WEF) naming Cohesity as one of the world’s 61 most promising Technology Pioneers 2018. Recently, Cohesity also raised $250 million in Series E funding and is currently valued at $3.7 billion.

Gajen Kandiah, Hitachi Vantara

Gajen Kandiah was recently appointed CEO of Hitachi Vantara in July 2020. In this role, Kandiah leads the company’s 11,000 employees with an emphasis on empowering client-facing teams to leverage Hitachi Vantara’s digital infrastructure to meet the industry-specific needs of clients around the world. Prior to joining Hitachi Vantara, Kandiah spent 15 years at Cognizant, where he helped grow the business from $368 million in annual revenues to over $16 billion. He also led Cognizant’s acquisitions of software engineering company Softvision, marketing solutions provider Netcentric, and Idea Coutoure, a digital innovation business.

Antonio Neri, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

As the President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Antonio Neris is responsible for the development and delivery of enterprise technology solutions and services that help businesses across the globe. Throughout his more than 25 years with the company, Neri has held a range of leadership positions. Most recently, Neri acted as Executive Vice President and General Manager of HPE’s Enterprise Group, which included HPE’s Server, Networking, Storage, and Technology Services business units. Additionally, Neri was instrumental in the strategy, development, and introduction of many innovations at HP and HPE, including HPE Apollo, HPE Superdome X, HPE Cloudline, and HPE Moonshot, among others. Recently, HPE acquired Zerto.

Phil Bullinger, Infinidat

Phil Bullinger, the CEO of Infinidat has more than 30 years of experience in the enterprise storage space. Bullinger’s career has spanned a variety of engineering and business leadership roles, developing products that have defined and led their respective markets. Bullinger was named CEO of Infinidat in January of this year. Prior to this time, he was the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Data Center Business at Western Digital, and the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Dell EMC Isilon BU before that. Additionally, Bullinger acted as the Senior Vice President of Storage at Oracle.

George Kurian, NetApp

George Kurian is the CEO of NetApp, as well as a member of the company’s Board of Directors. Kurian joined NetApp in 2011 serving as senior vice president of the Storage Solutions Group before becoming the senior vice president of the Data ONTAP Group. Kurian was then executive vice president of Product Operations, and was later named CEO in June 2015. Prior to his time at NetApp, Kurian was vice president and general manager of the Application Networking and Switching Technology Group at Cisco Systems, as well as the vice president of Akamai Technologies. Kurian is also an independent director on the Board of the Cigna Corporation, a global health services company.

Charles Giancarlo, Pure Storage

Charles Giancarlo is Chairman and CEO of Pure Storage. He has over 30 years of experience driving growth and innovation at global technology companies. Prior to his work at Pure Storage, Giancarlo acted as Senior Advisor at Silver Lake Partners until 2015, and as Managing Director and Head of Value Creation previous to that time. In these roles, Giancarlo focused on investment opportunities and helped lead Silver Lake’s acquisition and management of Skype. Additionally, Giancarlo currently serves on the boards of Arista Networks and Zscaler, is a Trustee of Brown University, and an advisor to the UC Berkeley School of Engineering. In 2020, Pure Storage acquired Portworx for $370 million.

David Goeckeler, Western Digital

David Goeckeler has been the CEO of Western Digital Corporation since March 2020. Prior to his work at Western Digital, Goeckeler was Executive Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Networking and Security Business, which was a $34 billion global technology franchise. He spent 19 years at Cisco, leading a team of more than 25,000 engineers and overseeing the company’s networking and security strategy, including development operations for Cisco’s technology portfolio and strategic acquisitions. Goeckeler was essential in defining Cisco’s threat-centric security strategy, leading the company in its transition to a software and recurring revenue-based model.

The post The 7 Coolest Data Storage CEOs of 2021 appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Solutions Review’s Enterprise Data Storage Vendors to Watch Vendors to Watch is an annual listing of solution providers we believe are worth monitoring. Companies are commonly included if they demonstrate a product roadmap aligning with our meta-analysis of the marketplace. Other criteria include recent and significant funding, talent acquisition, a disruptive or innovative new technology or product, or inclusion in a major analyst publication.

Enterprise data storage solutions act as a central repository for information, commonly offering data management, protection, and sharing. Because enterprises are increasingly handling massive amounts of business-critical data, they require storage systems that are highly scalable, offer unlimited connectivity, and support multiple platforms. There are several approaches to enterprise data storage, including Storage Area Networks (SANs), Network-Attached Storage (NAS), Direct-Attached Storage (DAS), and cloud storage. The importance of data storage is underlined by the exponential generation of new data and the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

These enterprise data storage Vendors to Watch have met at least two of our five points of inclusion and represent to some degree the evolution of the marketplace. It’s in that spirit we turn our attention to the immediate future. Providers are listed in alphabetical order. Provider names and logos are linked so you can learn more.

Cloudian

Cloudian is an independent provider of object storage systems, offering S3 compatibility along with a partnership ecosystem. Additionally, the provider’s data fabric architecture allows enterprises to store, find, and protect object and file data across sites. Cloudian is recommended as a target for enterprise backup solutions and data tiering. It is also frequently used as an archive for rich media and video surveillance. Though its file service implementation is still growing and not fully integrated, Cloudian works well with object-based workloads. The provider is also expanding its integration by qualifying HyperStore as a target for third-party backup, data management, and cloud gateway products.

Cohesity

Cohesity consolidates secondary storage silos onto a hyperconverged, webscale data platform that supports both public and private clouds. The vendor’s storage solution enables users to streamline their backup and data protection, and then converge file and object services. Organizations looking for both enterprise data storage and backup should consider Cohesity. The vendor is consistently mentioned among the best in the storage space, and regularly pops up in analyst reports as a major player. While Cohesity’s VM backup capabilities are strong, its core strength is in managing, indexing, and protecting secondary storage data.

Infinidat

Infinidat’s storage solutions are designed to manage demanding workloads and the provider has shipped over 6 Exabytes worldwide with 1 Exabyte shipped in the last six months. Additionally, Infinidat was named a leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage Arrays. In January 2020, Infinidat was also recognized as Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Primary Storage. Infinidat recently announced it has secured an additional investment round from its existing investors, including TPG Growth, Goldman Sachs, Claridge Ion Investors, and Moshe Yanai. The funding will be used to build on new initiatives, as well as technical research and product development.

NetApp

NetApp is a storage, cloud computing, information technology, and data management solution provider. In addition to predominantly offering on-prem storage infrastructure, the provider also specializes in hybrid cloud data services that facilitate the management of applications and data across cloud and on-prem environments, in order to accelerate digital transformation. The vendor’s solution, StorageGRID, is an object storage platform whose primary access method is the Amazon S3 API. The tool offers hybrid cloud workflow, and adheres to SEC and FINRA regulations. NetApp was also early to embrace the public cloud, resulting in deep integrations with public cloud providers. In 2020, NetApp acquired Spot.

Pure Storage

Pure Storage is an all-flash enterprise storage provider that enables broad deployment of flash in data centers. The vendor’s platforms accelerate random I/O-intensive applications such as server virtualization, desktop virtualization (VDI), database (OLTP, rich analytics/OLAP, SQL, and NoSQL), and cloud computing. Pure Storage also enables users to adopt next-generation technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, to maximize the value of their data. The provider’s solution is recommended for use cases such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, real-time analytics, life sciences, HPC, and rapid restore data protection workloads.

The post Solutions Review Names 5 Data Storage Vendors to Watch, 2021 appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

What is the BUDR Insight Jam?

The BUDR Insight Jam is a data protection community web event. Solutions Review editors are bringing the best and brightest minds in the industry together for a one-day social media gathering. Participants will include industry analysts, experts, influencers, authors, practitioners, and software solution providers.

Join the largest BUDR software buyer and practitioner community

Solutions Review Backup and Disaster Recovery is the largest BUDR software buyer and practitioner community on the web. Our Universe of Influence reach is more than 7 million business and IT decision-makers, as well as C-suite and other top management professionals. Our readers primarily use us as an enterprise technology news source and trusted resource for solving some of their most complex problems.

Our collection of vendor-agnostic buyer’s resource help BUDR buyers and practitioners during the research and discovery phase of a buying cycle. This critical stage of information gathering is where buyers narrow down the field of solution providers to a short-list they plan to engage. The mission of Solutions Review is to make it easier for buyers of backup and disaster recovery software to connect with the best providers.

Featured Participants

Demetrius Malbrough is the Principle Technical Product Marketing Manager of Puppet, Inc. as well as the host of the Data Protection Gumbo Podcast. Over his 21 years in cloud data management and backup and disaster recovery, he has worked with giants in the industry, including IBM, Dell EMC, and Rubrik. Malbrough has expertise in both the business and architectural aspects of data protection and IT resiliency solutions in a startup environment. Additionally, through his podcast, Malbrough has spoken with top founders, CIOs, CTOs, and CEOs in the space about the future of the data protection industry.

Simon Taylor is the CEO of HYCU, Inc. He has more than 15 years of experience in go-to-market strategy development, product marketing, and channel sales management for the tech industry. Prior to his work at HYCU, Taylor held several senior executive leadership positions within Comtrade Software. He has also worked with Forrester Research, Putnam Investments, and Omego. As the CEO of HYCU, Inc., Taylor develops and executes the strategy of the multi-cloud backup and recovery SaaS provider.

Diana Salazar is Quantum’s Product Marketing Manager of Enterprise Backup and Archive. She has over 17 years of experience in technology solutions and services. Through Salazar’s work at Quantum, she has helped to provide specialized storage solutions for content and data management in collaborative workflows for entertainment, physical sciences, genomics, research, and big data applications in physical, virtual, or cloud environments.

Featured Brands

IBM offers a range of technology and consulting services, including predictive analytics . The vendor’s backup and disaster recovery solution, Spectrum Protect, is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It enables backups and recovery for virtual, physical, and cloud environments. The tool also offers VM protection with searchable catalog and role-based administration. IBM Spectrum Protect is a suite of software offerings designed to help organizations manage and protect their data by simplifying backup administration.

StorageCraft offers backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity solutions for servers, desktops, and laptops. Their solutions reduce downtime, improve security and stability for systems and data, and lower the total cost of ownership. The vendor boasts four offices globally and has backed up over one million devices. StorageCraft’s business is focused on data protection and restoration tools that are offered via value-added and channel partners. However, it also offers scale-out storage, replication, recovery, integrated data protection, and more. The solution is supported by on-prem and cloud-based environments, as well as hybrid deployments.

Veritas Technologies provides backup and recovery, business continuity, information governance, and storage management tools. Its NetBackup product is a single and scalable solution that can protect physical, virtual and cloud workloads. Multitenant support is optional, and the solution is available on a converged platform that requires minimal administration. It eliminates point products and improves productivity within a business using centralized, policy-based management. Veritas also incorporates innovative technologies for data reduction and bandwidth efficiency, while providing extensive indexing and search capabilities.

Why participate in the BUDR Insight Jam?

Wondering what’s in it for you? Join us for the BUDR Insight Jam to get insight on backup and disaster recovery software buying, best practices for piloting new and emerging technologies, and find out what the future will bring. It’s also going to be a top-notch networking event featuring many of the foremost thought leaders in the field.

BUDR Insight Jam Event Details

Uncover insights personalized to your interests. From analysts to IT and the public sector, there is something for everyone. Solutions Review editors will be breaking the web event into four main tracks so you can find the insights that are best for you:

9:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Advice for backup and disaster recovery software buyers

12:00 PM – 3:00 PM: Best practices for BUDR practitioners

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM: Panel Discussion

3:00 PM – 6:00 PM: Decision-making in a time of uncertainty

3:00 PM – 4:00 PM: Panel Discussion

3:00 PM – 9:00 PM: Industry trends and predictions for 2020

FAQ

What: The Solutions Review BUDR Insight Jam

When: Tuesday December 15, 2020 from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM Eastern

Where: Twitter (using the hashtag #BUDRInsightJam), YouTube, LinkedIn

The post What to Expect During the Second Annual Solutions Review BUDR Insight Jam appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Top providers highlighted include: Amazon Web Services, Caringo, Cloudian, Cohesity, DataDirect Networks, Dell EMC, Fujitsu, Hedvig, Hitachi Vantara, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei, IBM, Inspur, Kaminario, NetApp, Nutanix, Pivot3, Pure Storage, Qumulo, Rackspace, Red Hat, Scality, StorageCraft, SUSE, SwiftStack, Violin Systems, Virtustream, and Western Digital.

Solutions Review is a collection of business software news and resource sites that aggregates, curates and creates the leading content to connect buyers and sellers. Over the past six years, Solutions Review has launched 20 distinct and category-specific Buyer’s Guide sites for technologies ranging from Enterprise Cloud to Data Integration, as well as Enterprise Resource Management, Identity and Access Management, Data Analytics and Business Intelligence, Network Monitoring, Backup and Recovery, and Endpoint Security.

In addition to the 2020 Buyer’s Guide for Enterprise Data Storage, readers are encouraged to view updated research in other related Solutions Review coverage areas:

• Buyer’s Guide for Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions
• Buyer’s Guide for Disaster Recovery as a Service
• Data Protection Vendor Comparison Map
• Buyer’s Guide for Data Management Software
• Data Management Vendor Comparison Map
• Buyer’s Guide for Data Integration Tools
• Data Integration Vendor Comparison Map

More than four million technology professionals will use Solutions Review to help them evaluate business software this year. Solutions Review is a completely vendor-agnostic resource and does not endorse any individual product or service.

View and download the 2020 Buyer’s Guide for Enterprise Data Storage here.

The post Solutions Review Releases 2020 Updates to Buyer’s Guide for Enterprise Data Storage appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Technology has evolved so rapidly in the past few decades that the demand for high-quality data storage has exploded. The biggest hard drives thirty years ago would barely be able to store more than a couple of modern text documents. Floppy disks have been replaced by memory cards, USB drives, and CDs. Every single day, the world is creating over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, with most of that data being created in the past few years. Enterprises are collecting all sorts of data: customer data, marketing data, sales data, productivity data, analytics, predictions, and much more.

When it comes to storing all of this data, it’s important for enterprises to be aware of the options available to them, and to be realistic about their needs. It can be easy to get lost in the world of data storage terminology, particularly when looking for the right solution for your business. The editors at Solutions Review are here to break down these terms and technologies, starting with one of the three most well-known types of data storage solutions: NAS. More complex than DAS but not as expansive as SAN, NAS storage is an approachable middleman regardless of business size, industry, or vertical.

What is NAS Storage?

NAS (Networked Attached Storage) refers to a type of server that makes storage available within a network. Its primary purpose is to provide centralized and shared access to unstructured data, including audio, video, websites, text files, and other important documents. Typically, NAS solutions are file-level data storage solutions connected to a specific computer network, which provides data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. This kind of solution is an absolute necessity for businesses and organizations that don’t want to store their data on a single computer or hard drive.

Instead of a single hard drive directly connected to your computer, NAS acts like an external hard drive for your entire network. It acts as a central server that manages your data, containing storage disks, drives, processors, and RAM. Each NAS storage unit resides on the LAN as an independent network node, and each has its own unique IP address. NAS typically has no keyboard or display, and is configured and managed on a separate computer with a browser-based utility application. If you’re looking for an easy way to share and simultaneously access data across a network, NAS is a good choice for your company.

NAS Storage Benefits

The biggest benefit of NAS is easy access to stored data by any networked device. Some vendors also offer remote access. NAS offers strategies for backup and capabilities to address redundancy needs. In addition to holding multiple mirrored hard drives, NAS can be formatted to support replicated disks, RAID configuration, and erasure coding to ensure data integrity. All of this functionality takes place inside a small physical space, compared to the sheer amount of physical storage required to store SAN solutions.

In terms of cost, NAS is much more approachable than something like SAN, and it provides greater value than DAS. At the same time, NAS only requires quick and simple setup. Typical NAS architectures are delivered with simplified scripts, or as appliances with pre-installed operating systems. With a much quicker initial setup than other storage solutions, NAS reduces the potential for frustration or the need to contact vendor customer service. Furthermore, NAS doesn’t require a dedicated IT professional to continue maintenance and management.

When it comes to scalability, NAS truly shines. It’s incredibly easy to add more storage capacity, you just need to add additional hard drives or storage disks to the unit itself. The hardware doesn’t need to be upgraded or replaced, and data is preserved throughout the process. The network doesn’t even need to be shut down. This will particularly benefit organizations on a budget, as buying one or two additional hard drives is much more cost-effective than having to buy an entirely new NAS solution.

What is NAS storage used for?

There are NAS solutions available at every business level, whether you’re a solo freelancer or a large enterprise. Nevertheless, NAS provides the most value for mid-sized businesses, and is also useful for companies that employ remote teams and workers in different time zones.

Enterprise NAS solutions are typically designed with more high-end data features to handle massive amounts of data storage and aid with storage management. They offer more space to scale and are capable of handling larger volumes of streaming media files, including virtual machine images. More storage requires larger capacity disks, more memory, and powerful network processing, but these capabilities are worth it if your business can afford it. If your NAS array has a server mode, it can be made to serve email, multimedia files, databases, and printing jobs. NAS can also be deployed as the foundation for a personal or private cloud.

Midmarket NAS solutions are appropriate for businesses that are handling hundreds of terabytes of data. Typically these solutions can’t be clustered, and may lead to file system siloes. Small-team NAS solutions are available, but the market has been shifting towards a more cloud-based model.

Other helpful resources

Aside from reading this guide, it can be helpful to have a more visual representation of what exactly NAS is and how it works, especially in comparison with DAS and SAN. In terms of other basic guides, it’s important to familiarize yourself with data storage terms and units of measurement. If you have specific data quantities that you need to store, knowing the capacity of different solutions is a necessity.

If you’re looking for a list of recommended enterprise data storage solutions, this list provides an overview of the 28 best companies to check out in 2020.

The post Intro to Enterprise Data Storage: What is NAS Storage? appeared first on Best Enterprise Data Storage Software, Solutions, Vendors and Platforms.

Analyst house Gartner, Inc. recently announced its Best Primary Storage Solutions of 2020, as reviewed by verified customers through its Peer Insights Customers’ Choice series. Gartner Peer Insights is a robust enterprise IT product and service review platform that hosts more than 255,000 verified customer reviews across 355 defined markets. In markets where there is enough data, Gartner Peer Insights recognizes the vendors that are the most highly rated by their customers through the Customers’ Choice distinction.

Peer Insights Customers’ Choice does not include an expansive vendor listing or proprietary graphic to help organizations select the best tools. Rather, it provides reviews that go through a strict validation process to ensure they are authentic and professional. Garter Peer Insights are meant to be a complement to its expert-led research reports. At Solutions Review, we read the reviews, available here, and pulled out the key takeaways.

Infinibox Lands Highest Average Score

Infinidat’s Infinbox solution received 237 verified reviews, with the highest average rating of 4.9 stars. 211 of its reviews were 5 stars, and the remaining 26 were 4 stars. Infinibox’s closest competitor in the primary storage space according to Customers’ Choice is Pure Storage (4.8 stars). Infinidat achieved Federal Information Processing Stanrds (FIPS) 140-2 validation earlier in 2019, and the vendor has collaborated with various companies including ECMD, iBASIS, and Thales. Infinidat was also named a Leader in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage.

NetApp Receives Hundreds of Positive Ratings

NetApp’s FAS series solution received 510 verified reviews, netting an average rating of 4.6 stars. 345 of those ratings were 5 stars, and 149 were 4 stars. Infinibox’s closest competitor in the primary storage space according to Customer’s Choice is Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). NetApp offers SAN storage, its highly reviewed FlexArray Storage Virtualization (FAS), as well as dish shelves and storage media. In late 2019, NetApp announced a partnership with Google Cloud, and was also named a Leader in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage. 

Gartner Recommends Using Customer Reviews to Supplement Vendor Evaluation

Where Gartner’s Magic Quadrants are aimed at helping organizations identify vendors to keep tabs on in the overall marketplace, peer reviews are driven only by customer feedback based on specific experiences relative to unique technology environments. That’s where the disconnect can sometimes come from when comparing analyst resources to individual reviews. In this way it is best to utilize all the tools at your disposal when assessing data integration software.

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When it comes to data storage, it’s important to be realistic about your needs. Are you a smaller business using a simple but versatile solution like DAS? Or is your enterprise considering the benefits of SAN and NAS? Regardless of which solution you end up working with, it all depends on how much data you actually need to store and access. Whether you’re accessing the cloud or a local hard drive, the amount of data that your business interacts with will ultimately determine what type of technology you’re going to need.

It can be easy to get lost in the world of data storage terminology, particularly when discussing data storage units of measurement. What’s the difference between bits and bytes? Megabytes and gigabytes? Terabytes and kilobytes? This resource will help break down these concepts into easily manageable, byte-sized pieces.

Data Storage Units Chart: From Smallest to Largest

Bits are the basic building blocks of not only data storage, but all computers. Computers work in binary digits, combining 0’s and 1’s in countless patterns. These binary digits are known as bits, and are the smallest possible unit for data storage.

When 8 bits are combined, you get a byte. Bytes are used to store a single character; whether’s it a letter, number, or punctuation. All memory storage is expressed in terms of bytes, so although bits might be the foundation upon which data storage is built, bytes are the building blocks that truly denote the usability of any one storage solution.

Because storage is expressed in terms of bytes, all greater units are typically referred to by their shortened names. This means that you could keep adding more prefixes to talk about more and more data. Above terabyte, we have petabyte (PB), exabyte (EB), zettabyte (ZB), and yottabyte (YB).

Once the numbers get high enough, it can be difficult to realistically visualize how much data we’re talking about. This volume of data is really only relevant to tech giants and massive corporations. But as the need for greater storage increases with the volume of data over time, we will inevitably develop the necessary vocabulary.

So What Kind of Storage Do You Need?

Technology has evolved so rapidly in the past few decades that the biggest hard drives thirty years ago would barely be able to store more than than a couple of modern MP3 files. Today, consumers buying a TB of external hard drive storage for their personal laptops can store 100,000 that amount. Large floppy disks have been replaced by tiny memory cards, USB drives, and a variety of portable storage devices. But the average consumer might not realize that every single day, the world is creating over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, with most of that data being created in the past few years.

 As mentioned above, a bit is the smallest possible data storage unit of measurement. Although storage capacity for enterprises is negligible until we start talking about solutions with massive amounts of storage, small businesses have more freedom. For small businesses, it can be enough to store files, images, or other important documents on CD’s, USB drives, and low-capacity external hard drives. There are also services like Google Drive and Dropbox that let you store files online.

The jump from small business to mid-size and enterprise-level business is a large one, particularly when it comes to data storage needs. It’s important to consider not only budget restraints, but physical limitations as well. Digital storage requires physical servers, hard drives, cables, and other technology that needs to be stored. When your business starts needing to store petabytes, exabytes, or even zettabytes of data, you’re going to need a lot of hardware. It’s big decision to make, and it’s important to weigh the pros and cons of the different methods available to you. There are also options to rely on the resources of other companies and store your data in the cloud.

Picking the Best Data Storage Solution

When it comes to picking a data storage solution, companies can choose from a variety of options, but the most common ones fall into three categories: Direct Attached Storage (DAS), Network Attached Storage (NAS), and Storage Area Network (SAN).

DAS

DAS solutions are typically the simplest and the cheapest. High-capacity backup hard drives, solid state drives, and optical disc drives are all examples of DAS solutions. Because of the relatively cheap price and minimal space obstruction, DAS is a great choice for very small businesses with only a handful of employees. Remote access is usually not possible with DAS.

NAS

Small to mid-size companies have more demanding data storage requirements than small businesses. NAS allows these companies to store data in a centralized location, and can be accessed remotely from various devices on your network. NAS are usually pieces of hardware fitted with multiple hard drives in a RAID configuration, and can be connected to a switch or router on a network via a network interface card. If your business is looking for centralized storage, remote access, file sharing, and scalability, consider utilizing a NAS solution.

SAN

SAN solutions are a good fit for large companies and enterprises that have the space to store multiple disk arrays, switches, and servers. SAN gives access to large blocks of data between servers and storage devices across multiple locations. This solution is a necessity for any large company that needs to reliably and quickly access massive amounts of data. SAN also provides a higher level of data security and is much more fault-tolerant than NAS and DAS.

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