Storage Vendors Branch Out

Two storage vendors this week unveiled plans to try to replicate their success in new markets.

Pivot3 hopes to expand from digital video surveillance into high-performance storage with an approach it calls “Serverless Computing” that eliminates the need for application servers.

And Pillar Data Systems is moving its application-aware storage technology from the high-end into the midrange with a new offering.

Pivot3 Broadens Its Reach

Pivot3 chief marketing officer Lee Caswell thinks the company’s technology will have broader appeal outside the storage-intensive market for video surveillance.

“We believe it will be applicable to a much broader market that goes beyond the video surveillance market,” said Caswell, who said the technology will bring “server Virtualizationand consolidation to markets that haven’t been able to benefit.”

Target markets include block-based rich media and online archiving, which Caswell said Pivot3 can address for a quarter to a third of competing products, for about $1.5 million a petabyte.

The approach also saves server, power and space costs by “eliminating a server that would otherwise be added to the rack,” he said.

Pivot3’s X86-based storage nodes work with the Xen hypervisor to absorb compute-intensive workloads now performed using standalone application servers.

Jeff Boles, senior analyst and director of Validation Services with the Taneja Group, said in a statement that “Serverless Computing represents a new class of emerging technology where I/O and compute resources are closely coupled together to serve the needs of I/O-intensive workloads with less complexity, easier management, and higher availability than distributed solutions.”

“By layering server virtualization on top of their high-performance, highly available, x86-based storage controllers, Pivot3 allows organizations to harness huge quantities of I/O without complex fabrics or complex management,” the analyst added.

Pillar Moves Down Market

Pillar this week unveiled the Pillar Axiom 300, with list prices starting at $35,000, less than half the cost of the company’s flagship Axiom 600.

Pillar claims 80 percent disk utilization for its arrays, which can consolidate applications and tiers of storage onto a single platform, optimized for specific applications, including Oracle, Exchange and virtualization.

Curt Wittich, Pillar’s vice president of worldwide sales, said the Axiom 300 was developed as the result of requests from channel partners.

“The Axiom 300 delivers enterprise-class performance, availability and functionality at an entry-level price,” he said. “We’re confident no other storage system on the market today rivals the Axiom 300 in terms of value, performance, functionality and efficiency.”

Back to Enterprise Storage Forum