The days of on-site data management are long gone, as businesses continue to grow and expand, along with their needs for data storage. Cloud storage has been the most used alternative, with a growing number of businesses turning to this method for their needs. But many businesses are reluctant to trust large, public cloud spaces. This opened the door for a new company to be born that had a better way for businesses to securely store their unstructured data using cloud storage in their own private environment.
SwiftStack was founded six years ago to fill this need. SwiftStack innovations power hybrid cloud storage for Enterprises. It starts with universal access to petabytes of unstructured data in a single namespace on premises, and continues with freedom to move workloads between private data centers and public clouds like Amazon or Google. Reward Expert recently had the pleasure of speaking with Erik Pounds, VP Marketing for the company.
Solving the Storage Problems
SwiftStack is a cloud-native storage for unstructured data in a single namespace, powered by policies to extend enterprise workflows across private and public infrastructure. This allows businesses to work much more efficiently.
SwiftStack offers Multi-Cloud Data Management, and according to Pounds, this “allows businesses and organizations to store and manage more data, bridge private and public infrastructure, and keep all of their data active and accessible to extract the most value from it.” Pounds went on to add that, “SwiftStack’s modern and cloud-native architecture helps our customers reduce the number of data silos they manage, drastically simplifying their storage environment, even when scaling to 10’s of petabytes.”
Scaling your Business = Increased Storage Needs
Image via swiftstack.comWhen people think about “scaling” their business, it’s often attributed to getting more customers, bigger office space or expanding to new territories. But cloud storage plays an important role in business growth as well.
“Businesses and our societies as a whole are now driven primarily by data,” explained Pounds. “Everything we do, buy, or utilize has a data trail associated with it. When a business scales, it will need to store and leverage more data to thrive. If you cannot capture, store, and easily access a growing repository of data, the business will not be able to scale. Data storage and management solutions of a decade ago do not align with the operational and cost requirements of today’s businesses.”
“Services provided and amount of data managed does not have a direct correlation with the number of employees in a business. For example, Premiere Digital referenced above has to manage 20+ petabytes of video assets, but has a complete IT staff of a few people.”
Is Your Business Ready for Cloud Storage?
Data storage is a major challenge for many businesses. So how do you know when you’re ready for a cloud storage provider like SwiftStack? According to Pounds, there are many triggers that can motivate a business to start adopting cloud storage for their applications and workflows. Here are a few:
1) You’re managing enough unstructured data that it’s getting a bit unwieldy with your current architecture. You may have too many silos of data or your current systems are not flexible to meet the needs of new applications.
2) You desire to increase the utilization of your unstructured data. This could start by getting data for a single use into one namespace. Another would be by eliminating cold storage and keeping all data active. Maybe also making the data globally accessible instead of being bound by the four walls of a single data center.
3) You want to start leveraging public cloud, but do not want to, or cannot, “lift and shift”. Maybe you need your data on-premises but would like to leverage services in the public cloud.
“Basically, if you have a quote from your existing vendor or reseller to renew the support and maintenance contract on your existing environment and further scale it and you want to pull your hair out…it’s a good time to seriously evaluate multi-cloud storage,” said Pounds.
The Future is Bright for SwiftStack
All of SwiftStack’s founders still remain in leadership roles in the company, and now their solutions are also helping organizations manage data across multiple clouds, in addition to what is in their data centers. Pounds shared with us what the future plans are for the company.
“Currently, we’re making significant investments in a few areas. The first is in the development of a new file system built for cloud, allowing classic and cloud-native applications to utilize SwiftStack. This helps customers take incremental steps on their journey to being fully cloud native. This technology has been contributed to the community in a project called ProxyFS.”
“Another area is investing in the creation of a single multi-cloud namespace. Organizations do not want to be bound by the four walls of a data center or a single public cloud. They want to be able to run their applications, use services, and place data in the best cloud at a given point in time. For this to be a reality, data needs to be portable and placed via policy. This technology has been contributed to the community in a project called 1space.”
“We contribute to many community projects because we have a key tenant that all functions that touch data should be open. This invites participation from others and helps reduce vendor lock-in. In addition to the projects mentioned above, we also lead and contribute to OpenStack Swift and a metadata-focused project called MetaSync.”
To learn more about SwiftStack and how they can help your growing business, visit swiftstack.com.