Five New Start-Ups in Storage Discovered:

ClearSky Data, Inc. announced the launch of its global storage network, a service that simplifies the entire enterprise data lifecycle as a fully managed service.

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The service combines the performance and availability of local enterprise storage with the scalability, agility and economics of the cloud, liberating ove rburdened IT teams from managing primary, backup and DR storage infrastructure. ClearSky delivers data where it’s needed, enterprise-ready and fully optimized to eliminate the cost and data center footprint of traditional storage solutions.
 
IT leaders often cite storage management as one of their biggest challenges. Beyond the expense and difficulty of categorizing and managing performance and availability throughout the data lifecycle, IT has to respond quickly to changes in how applications are run – in data centers, colocation facilities, or in private or public clouds – and they typically have small teams with which to do it.

The ClearSky service simplifies that challenge with the ability to plug into storage infrastructure as a fully managed service from points of presence (PoPs) in major metro areas. The resulting SLA-based service delivers hundreds of thousands of IO/s and less than two milliseconds of latency, providing the performance of a local storage array with the comprehensive security, low latency and HA required for enterprise applications.
 
“Simplifying storage management is a critical objective for IT teams worldwide, and we are excited to add ClearSky’s managed service to our growing storage ecosystem,” said Charles Fan, SVP and GM, storage business unit, VMware, Inc. “For customers looking to leverage the latest VMware software-defined storage solutions, such as vSphere Virtual Volumes, services like ClearSky’s offer on-demand access to data with greater efficiency and ease of use.“
 
“Before we started using the ClearSky service, we had required up to 48 hours of downtime to migrate customer workloads,” said Tim Vogel, CTO, Xtium, Inc., cloud services company with multiple data centers across the U.S. “With ClearSky, our migration time has shrunk to 15 minutes, and we’re saving our customers an average of 60 to 70% to deliver our service, as compared to using traditional physical storage arrays.”
 
The ClearSky service enables workload portability and mobility between traditional and cloud environments, eliminating the need for storage infrastructure in multiple sites and freeing storage administrators from endless infrastructure management activities, so they can focus on new initiatives and growth. Users can quickly tap into unlimited amounts of storage when and where they need it, without the capital costs, delays and complexity IT has struggled with for decades.
 
“ClearSky Data simplifies our development lifecycle and adds agility to our storage processes,” said Ernesto DiGiambattista, CTO, Sentinel Benefits and Financial Group. “It changes storage from a daily task to a hands-free service offering.”

ClearSky Data’s patent-pending Smart Tiered Caching technology automatically distributes data across a network of geographically distributed cache layers with built-in redundancy in order to provide optimal performance based on evolving usage requirements and customer policies:

• Hot data: cached at the edge next to customer applications
• Warm data: cached in a ClearSky PoP within 120 miles of the customer
• All data: protected with multiple copies in the ClearSky Backing Cloud

The ClearSky service, which leverages vSphere Virtual Volumes as a key component, allows users to set storage policies, provision and add capacity on-demand, and access system alerts and updates 24/7/365. The offering also eliminates latency by using dedicated, redundant private networks and optimization techniques that minimize network traffic. The end-to-end service is easily accessed from anywhere by customers through a Web-based portal and integrates into existing management infrastructure. Users add capacity as they grow, paying only for what they need.
 
“ClearSky is the first company to truly live up to the storage service provider dream – offering true primary, transactional-level storage services with all the benefits of cloud economics and management,” said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. “It’s been a long time coming.”
 
“Enterprise IT is ready to break free from managing storage infrastructure and embrace new levels of agility,” said Ellen Rubin, CEO and co-founder, ClearSky. “Our global storage network will forever change the way IT thinks about storage, so businesses can reduce data center footprints, save money and access their data on-demand for applications running on-premise and in the cloud.”
 
ClearSky Data will premiere the company and exhibit its service at VMworld 2015 in San Francisco, CA.
 
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by Jean-Jacques Maleval | 2014.12.25 | News