Storage Start-Up Evtron Out of Stealth Mode

After traveling by car for more than 2,000 miles in less than two days, Andrew Mayhall, 19 and Kyle Goeken, 20, are preparing to start their next journey. This time, the founder and chief analytics officer, respectively, of Evtron Inc., a St. Louis-based startup, will officially launch its storage technology at the DEMO Fall 2012 conference.

Known as the Evtron CELL, the device is a high-density server storage platform fitting 120 HDDs. The proprietary patent pending heat sink and air-cooling technology allows for the CELL to fit more hard drives in a smaller space without overheating. Internal tests suggest the platform can reduce space for storage on average by 66%, while emitting 38% less heat than competing storage solutions.

"For the past three years, Evtron has been developing a technology that will solve one of the most complex problems facing enterprises today, storing the increasing amount of data available efficiently and cost-effectively," said founder Andrew Mayhall. "Today we introduce CELL, an affordable enterprise storage platform with modular scalability that has the potential to save companies between 30 and 40% compared with traditional costs, while using on average 45% less power than the currently industry leading standards."

"Uses for cloud computing are evolving rapidly, especially as the technology has moved from practical applications only for the enterprise to broad use for SMBs and the consumer," said Matt Marshall, executive producer of DEMO. "We are thrilled to showcase so many of today’s, and tomorrow’s, cutting-edge cloud technologies from the DEMO Fall 2012 stage."

Cell Platform Solves Storage Needs
According to a study authored by IBM, more than 27TB of data are generated every second. The increase and demand for cloud computing technology platforms have helped accelerate not just the amount of data generated by enterprises and consumers, but the increasing need to store and save data in all forms.

In short, increased storage capacity that requires less space, less energy and maximum scalability represents a business opportunity for data centers of sizes.

Evtron’s innovations are focused in the construction of the data towers that form the backbone of every data center. The company is focused on driving down the TCO by nearly 30%, primarily by redacting the amount of electricity required to cool the storage units.

This is made possible by the company’s CELL design.

Enterprise testing during the past 18 months
have revealed following attributes of the platform:

• The average rack ranges from 32 to 48 inches deep, with an average tower height of 7 feet
• The CELL platform can house 120 drivers within 4 units, making it 60% more efficient in data density when compared to similar data storage products currently available on the market.
• In a single 9-rack system, Evtron can store upward of 30PB of data, comparing favorably to the standard technology, which requires 23 racks to store the same capacity. This suggests Evtron may be more than 300% more efficient in storing data on a per cubic foot basis.

By utilizing this technology, data centers will have the ability to increase their storage capacity while simultaneously reducing energy consumption and cooling costs.

The cloud data storage and enterprise data market is predicted to be at $44 billion in 2013 and to more than $240 billion in 2020, according to recent studies by IDC and Forrester respectively.

The founders of Evtron believe their technology has the potential to scale widely to meet global storage needs.

"We feel Evtron has arrived at the right time and look forward to the business journey ahead," said Mayhall. "Now if I could just remember where Kyle parked our car."