Geoff Barrall Executive Chairman, Gridstore

Gridstore, Inc. in grid-based, scale-out NAS, announced that Geoff Barrall has been named the company's executive chairman of its board of directors.



The storage-industry veteran brings decades leadership in creating storage solutions and building successful new markets opportunities for the SME to the enterprise. Barrall will play an integral role as Gridstore continues to set the standard for a new generation of scale-out NAS.

The appointment of Barrall is a validation of Gridstore's innovation and ability to execute and deliver the industry's next generation of scale-out NAS. Gridstore combines virtualization with a grid processing platform designed from day one to deliver a single pool of storage that simplifies management and increases performance, scalability and reliability verses traditional clustered scale-out NAS at a fraction of the total cost. Gridstore provides plug and play capacity and I/O scaling so customers can start small and incrementally grow to any size they require. This eliminates the need to over-provision costly storage resources and removes the complexity and waste associated with clustered NAS solutions.

"I've been looking at scale-out storage solutions for many years and every product has been fraught with low performance and high cost caused by the clustering model that has been universally used," said Geoff Barrall. "When I was introduced to Gridstore my first thought was, 'Here is a company that finally has it right'. Its simple, elegant design allows for a much higher level of performance and scale than cluster-based solutions, while requiring a fraction of their cost to maintain. I'm excited to join Gridstore's team as the company actually delivers the promised benefits of scale-out storage to the market."

Formerly the chief technology officer and vice president of engineering for Overland Storage, Barrall brings years of experience and contacts in the areas of product strategy, marketing strategy and technology consulting to his new executive chairman role at Gridstore. During his time at Overland the company grew its market share with technology innovations for more scalable and reliable storage solutions.

Prior to his position with Overland Storage, Barrall was the founder and CEO at Drobo (formerly Data Robotics), a storage platform designed for the SOHO market where he rapidly grew sales from zero to a $40 million annual run rate within just ten quarters of initial product launch. Prior to Data Robotics, he was founder and CTO of BlueArc, an enterprise storage company acquired by Hitachi Data Systems.

"Gridstore is at a pivotal growth point and we are delighted to have Geoff on board as executive chairman," said Kelly Murphy, CEO, Gridstore. "He brings an amazing track record in growing highly successful storage businesses with solutions that have made a huge impact on the industry. While Gridstore brings the next generation of scale-out storage to the market that eliminates the cost, complexity and waste of cluster based solutions - adding Geoff's experience, leadership and vision will accelerate the impact our products will have in changing the storage market."