DataGravity Out of Stealth Mode

DataGravity,Inc. announced its Discovery Series, a data-aware storage platform that tracks data access and analyzes data as it is stored to provide greater visibility, insight and value from a company’s information assets.

The Discovery Series delivers storage, protection, data governance, search and discovery powered by an enterprise-grade hardware platform and patent-pending software architecture, enabling midmarket companies to glean new insights and make better business decisions.  

As more than 80% of the data being produced today is unstructured, companies are struggling to maintain, much less benefit from, their rapidly growing stores of human-generated data. Companies are paying a premium for storage infrastructure, layered management applications and siloed processes that only introduce greater complexities without offering real-time insights. DataGravity is addressing this challenge with an unified storage platform that offers insights at the same richness of intelligence, regardless of whether the data is block or file. It supports NFS, CIFS/SMB and iSCSI LUNs, with the additional capability to manage VMs natively.

The software architecture lets IT teams, and security, compliance and line-of-business users unlock the value in their data by automatically analyzing information as it is ingested, without impacting production operations. The result is active insight that will change what the market demands from primary storage, and will also transform how professionals in IT, marketing, compliance, human resources, sales and other departments work.

The Discovery Series redefines enterprise-grade storage from a back-office container into a front-office asset with a 360-degree view of data. Using a responsive HTML5 user interface with authenticated, role-based access, IT and business users alike can keep track of their data, understand data usage patterns, restore content, gain insights into information relevant to their projects and initiatives, and identify subject matter experts and potential collaborators.

“The unstructured data dilemma is growing, and IDC has been predicting technology would catch up to provide an answer to the market demand,” said Laura Dubois, program VP of storage at IDC. “The DataGravity approach is transformational in an industry where innovation has been mostly incremental. DataGravity data-aware storage can tell you about the data it’s holding, making the embedded value of stored information accessible to customers who cannot otherwise support the cost and complexity of solutions available today.“

While the traditional metrics for evaluating storage costs by the terabyte or IO/s are important and are incorporated into the Discovery Series platform, DataGravity expands the economics of storage to also measure the value derived by technical and non-technical users in virtually every knowledge-driven industry. Users will be able to find, filter and visualize content by topic, file type, size, owner, date range and user activity to unveil the relevant data. Dashboards dedicated to file analysis, auditing and data access help customers identify and understand rogue users, storage trends, dormant data and risk exposure. These insights are available regardless of the access protocol, either block or file.

“DataGravity has the ability to not only replace our current storage vendor, but also enhance how we run our law practice by providing insights into data we couldn’t easily search before,” said Chris Berube, IT manager at Law Offices of Joe Bornstein, a DataGravity beta customer.

“Getting intelligence from unstructured data has traditionally meant a long, expensive journey and complicated, layered products on top of primary storage. That’s not attainable for most midmarket organizations,” said Paula Long, co-founder and CEO, DataGravity. “The future of storage is about much more than just the data container; it’s about delivering integrated technology that lets users hear what the data they’re storing has to say about their business, and we see that future starting now.”

The DataGravity solution delivers these all-inclusive features at a price competitive with other primary storage solutions, with an MSRP between $50,000 and $100,000. The Discovery Series will initially be offered in two models, the DG2200 and DG2400, with 48TB and 96TB capacity levels respectively. It will be sold through the DataGravity Partner Network of resellers.

It will be available to ship in October.

VMworld attendees can see it in action at the DataGravity booth, August 24 through 28 in San Francisco, CA.

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Start-Up DataGravity Launched by Two EqualLogic Veterans
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