Nexenta Welcomes EMC …

Nexenta Systems, Inc., a software-defined storage company, issued a warm welcome to EMC Corp. as it announces its intent to enter this growing market in the second half of 2013.

EMC announced its plans during the EMC World conference in Las Vegas, NE.

Nexenta, founded in 2004, has been shipping its NexentaStor solution since 2008. Now in its third generation, the company has more than 5,000 customer deployments around the world and over 700PBs of data under management. The solution is based on OpenStorage ZFS technology and combines software with an open architecture, which is certified and supported on a choice of standard hardware.

Customers have embraced this approach because it is cheaper than proprietary storage solutions, eliminates vendor lock-in, and gives them total flexibility in terms of architecting and refreshing their storage hardware configurations. Historically, storage solutions offered by the large suppliers consist of proprietary OS software that only runs on that same vendor’s hardware. This results in expensive, long-term commitments especially when storage needs grow. The recent trend toward software-defined storage separates the software layer from the hardware platform, giving customers control, flexibility and cost-savings compared to the old model.

"This is an exciting day for Nexenta and our solution partners," commented Mark Lockareff, Nexenta CEO. "Having a company like EMC enter our market certainly validates what we have been saying all along; namely, that the old storage model is broken. Customers deserve to have a choice when it comes to selecting the hardware solutions that best fit their needs, and not be held hostage by their primary storage vendor. Because our software can run on a wide choice of hardware offered by our many partners including Dell and Cisco, it is quickly gaining market acceptance. As we learn more about EMC’s solution, I am confident we will continue to be seen as a leader in this important market space."