New alliance calls for online access to all archived data

April 30, 2010 -- A cadre of storage vendors has formed the Active Archive Alliance with the goal of turning offline archive and backups into visible, accessible extensions of online storage systems.

The newly created organization claims that developments in active archive applications and in tape and disk technologies – most notably the ability to see and access data on tape through a file system interface – make it possible for users to cost-effectively maintain all data in online storage for fast, easy search and retrieval.

The group says tying applications to tape via a file system interface mitigates the delays and problems normally associated with retrieving data off tape media.

The first thing that popped in to my head was "HSM all over again," but the group states that active archives differ from hierarchical storage managers. "An Active Archive contains production data, no matter how old or infrequently accessed, that can still be retrieved online."

They also maintain that Active Archiving is a collaborative solution offered by software and hardware vendors and can be put in place using existing equipment.

Spectra Logic's Molly Rector, a founding member of the group, says we can soon expect to see Active Archive best practices and guidelines for end user education, white papers, webinars, videos and educational materials on ActiveArchive.com.

Founding members of the Active Archive Alliance include Compellent Technologies, FileTek, QStar Technologies and Spectra Logic.

The Alliance is taking all comers. Membership is open to providers of file systems, active archive applications, cloud storage, high-density tape and disk storage, as well as individuals and end users.

For the latest developments in the world of archiving, visit InfoStor's Tape & Archiving page.

EMC, IBM, NetApp – Storage growth across the board

April 22, 2010 -- All signs are pointing to recovery in the data storage market as EMC, IBM and NetApp are all reporting big – in some cases record breaking – earning and sales.

EMC this week reported all-time record Q1 revenue, 92% profit growth, record quarterly free cash flow and an increase to its full-year 2010 business outlook.

EMC CEO Joe Tucci called the past few months "the best first quarter in company history" and credited the double-digit growth to EMC's "private cloud strategy and focus on four multi-billion dollar markets."

For the full details of EMC's Q1 results see "EMC breaks first quarter sales records."

IBM is also feeling the storage love. Big Blue announced its earnings this week, including an 11% jump in revenue growth for its System Storage hardware business for 1Q 2010.

Rewind seven weeks and NetApp topped expectations with Q3 GAAP revenues of $1.01 billion compared to $746 million in the same period last year (see "NetApp hit$ a home run").

The big boys are pulling in big bucks. The data storage market isn't recession-proof, but data doesn't stop growing and there's always a need for storage capacity despite advances in data reduction technologies and consolidation efforts.

So what's behind the record-breaking numbers? Are we in the midst of a hardware refresh cycle? Has the storage market really rebounded? On the other hand, is it just a proverbial case of "nobody gets fired for buying IBM" (or any other tier 1 vendor)?

NetApp to acquire Bycast for cloud storage software

April 7, 2010 -- NetApp is advancing its efforts in the cloud storage market with the acquisition of Bycast, a developer of object-based storage virtualization software that turns multiple storage devices across geographically dispersed locations into a single pool for storing fixed content data.

NetApp announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Bycast for an undisclosed sum. According to NetApp, the plan is to expand NetApp's reach in unified storage by adding object-based storage software to the mix.

NetApp claims that Bycast's products will strengthen its ability too serve vertical markets such as digital media, Web 2.0, healthcare, and cloud services providers.

"The addition of Bycast's products enables NetApp to offer our enterprise customers and service provider partners a complementary solution that enables them to efficiently build and manage a very large-scale global repository of data central to many IT-as-a-service offerings," Manish Goel, executive vice president, Product Operations, NetApp, said in a press release today.

Bycast's flagship product is its StorageGRID storage virtualization software. StorageGRID virtualizes heterogeneous storage devices – everything from high performance disk to tape – and runs on industry standard servers and provides a virtualization layer that sits between applications and the underlying storage hardware.

Applications store and retrieve data from the StorageGRID grid using CIFS, NFS, and HTTP. The system manages stored data using configurable policies that determine the degree of replication, geographic placement, and the storage tier on which data is stored.

Bycast positions StorageGRID as a cloud storage platform for service providers based on its ability to deliver multi-tenant digital archives across multiple sites.

Bycast claims to have about 250 customers under its belt and has OEM partnerships with HP and IBM, both of which sell the StorageGRID software under their own brands.

HP and Bycast have a strategic OEM partnership focused on medical image storage and archiving under the HP brand Medical Archive Solution (MAS).

IBM's System Storage Multilevel Grid Access Manager Software (Grid Access Manager Software) is based on StorageGRID and the IBM Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS) combines IBM's TotalStorage and IBM System x servers plus the Grid Access Manager Software. In addition, IBM also uses Bycast's File System Gateway technology to provide a standard CIFS/NFS interface for the IBM System Storage DR550.

According to NetApp, the company will determine whether it will continue the existing Bycast partnerships as it works through the closing of the transaction. The deal is expected to close in May 2010, subject to closing conditions.

According to an e-mail statement to InfoStor, NetApp plans to keep "most of the Bycast team" and does not plan to lay off existing NetApp employees because of the acquisition. NetApp is planning "to eliminate a small number of positions at Bycast. While Bycast employees' roles are not changing as a result of the acquisition, Bycast groups are being integrated into NetApp's organization."

The company plans to turn Bycast's Vancouver headquarters into a technology center for responsible for existing Bycast products and future product development.

Bycast's engineering and product management groups will report to product operations, solutions specialists will report to field operations, sales resources will report to sales, and so on.

NetApp announced its cloud storage intentions earlier this year when it formed a cloud partnership with Cisco and VMware (see Dave Simpson's article "NetApp, Cisco, VMware collaborate on the cloud").

The partnership is based on developing the Secure Multi-tenancy Design Architecture, a reference design with the goal of enhanced security in cloud environments.

Dell also entered the object-based storage fray recently with last month's debut of the Dell DX Object Storage Solution, a new homegrown system that uses metadata to store fixed digital content in a scalable, flat address space (see "Dell jumps into object-based storage").