Much has been made, in the past few years, about cloud storage technology, but most of that buzz has been aimed at the personal end user sector of that marketplace. It is clear that offerings for the home and enterprise user will have to be vastly different, in areas such as security, pricing, data access convenience, and safety. A few recent entries into the cloud storage marketplace are beginning to show that it is maturing towards the enterprise.

Nirvanix, based in San Diego, CA, has an entry it calls the Storage Delivery Network. It touts this solution as being less expensive and more flexible than traditional storage alternatives, such as additional network storage systems or using first generation online storage solutions. The Website says the “global Storage Delivery Network (SDN) provides intelligent, policy-based Cloud Storage for businesses that demand data security, availability and Enterprise-level support.” The system uses a patent-pending Internet Media File System which puts all global storage under a single namespace. This system provides both scalability and availability by placing every user’s data at the closest SDN Node. It is novel technology that could provide the impetus for the adoption of the cloud storage solution.

ParaScale, headquartered in Cupertino, CA, has a slightly different solution named ParaScale Cloud Storage (PCS). The company Website defines the offering as follows, “PCS software aggregates storage across multiple standard Linux servers to provide one highly scalable storage cloud, with massive capacity and parallel throughput. Files are accessible via 100% standard file-access protocols (NFS, HTTP, FTP), which means that applications don’t have to be modified to use PCS, and installation is easy. Deployments can start easily with several terabytes and scale to several petabytes in a single pool (namespace).” Again, a very powerful and innovative solution, and one which meets enterprise needs

With enterprises under severe economic pressure to innovate and cut costs, the cloud storage alternative is one that seems to makes sense. Offerings from Nirvanix and ParaScale may just be the tip of the iceberg as startups and established storage vendors see the profit possibilities in clearly conceived, secure cloud storage technologies. The path to secure, convenient, and available offsite storage has never been more clear.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2008 at 5:31 pm under Internet, Science and technology, Storage.

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