Datrium Forward Software Subscription Program

Datrium, Inc. introduced Forward, a software subscription program designed to liberate customers from the industry status quo of overpriced hardware and the burden of complete infrastructure overhauls.

With Datrium Forward, software licenses have portability across hardware types and deployment environments – whether on premises or in the cloud. This software portability frees enterprises to take ongoing advantage of company’s commodity hardware pricing, without the typical vendor list price markup of 10x to 20x, and at the same time gives them a dynamic control possible over the composition of their storage or HCI deployments.

“Datrium Forward is an industry-changing flexible software subscription model that transforms the way enterprises think about their data center infrastructure. We designed it to liberate IT teams from traditional hardware pricing models. Gone are the days when you had to wait for a refresh cycle to take advantage of technology advancements to meet changing workload requirements,” said Tim Page, CEO, Datrium.

Representing a step-function increase in software license portability and pay-as-you-go flexibility over typical storage array and HCI appliance purchasing models, Forward simplifies and shortens upgrade planning cycles. By making it easy and not cost-prohibitive for data center managers to make the best choices at any given moment throughout the subscription period about where to keep data to both achieve peak performance of applications and minimize costs, Forward strips away the barriers to keeping data infrastructure up to date while eliminating vendor lock-in concerns.

“At VPay, we are innovating new ways to complete insurance claim payments for a wide range of insurers including third-party administrators, health plans, workers’ compensation and auto insurance. Because we are leading the way with new technology for insurance claim payments, we need solutions that are both scalable and cost-effective,” said Kris Herrin, SVP, CIO, VPay. “Datrium Forward gives us a new way to manage our infrastructure. Not only does Datrium provide us with a secure platform that meets our needs, but the team has created an affordable deployment and pricing model.“

Forward customers experience the following benefits: 

• Portable licenses that can be used and moved across heterogeneous hardware versions and cloud infrastructures
• Term-based software licensing on cloud in 1+ year options, and in 3 or 5-year options on premises
• Host software, with support included, is priced per node per year
• Data node software, which provides storage persistence and HA, with support included, is priced per TB/year.

“The Datrium Forward program is made possible because the actual value of Datrium’s solution is in its software, and the hardware has truly been commoditized,” said Tony Asaro, senior analyst and founder, The INI Group. “The modern IT organization not only requires innovative technologies and products but by leveraging a flexible, adaptable, value-based licensing model, the investments IT makes in infrastructure are congruent with the speed and dynamic nature of business today. This is a groundbreaking approach that is greatly needed.“

When compared to land-locked appliance solutions that bundle hardware and software, Datrium’s data node hardware, with commodity no-haggle pricing, costs up to 95% less than the list price of popular storage arrays – and its software delivers more than just storage. Traditional arrays are unable to separate software from the underlying hardware because everything is built into the controller, creating a bottleneck in the system that forces customers to continually upgrade proprietary hardware at inflated prices to take advantage of newer software offerings. In contrast, Datrium’s controller software runs on hosts, and it can support any server vendor already in an organization’s data center and expand elastically. Renewals for Forward are consistent into the future for 10 years or longer, so there is no forklift-related sticker shock in later years.

“SANs and array-based systems are no longer a viable option for the enterprise given increasingly demanding workloads and the push to the cloud across industries. Organizations are expected to move critical workloads to the cloud and between clouds and are failing to do so with antiquated storage and HCI systems,” Page remarked. “By eliminating the massive, up-front capital investments traditionally required to upgrade systems and by decoupling software pricing from commoditized hardware, Datrium Forward makes it possible for customers to pay for value and achieve total data center portability, instead of lining vendors’ pockets. This is the future of acquiring data center infrastructure and keeping it current.“