StorSimple Debuts Cloud Storage Appliance

storsimple

StorSimple, which has a growing channel partner program, this week unveiled  a product line that aims to manage cloud storage as a tier. Specifically, the Santa Clara, Calif. company this week announced availability of its cloud storage appliances.

The appliances focus on Microsoft applications and employ an application-specific algorithm that determines whether to store data on the appliance’s solid state drives (SSD), Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives or the cloud.

Ian Howells, StorSimple’s chief marketing officer, cited Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange personal archives, and virtual machine libraries as among the applications the company targets with its appliances. With SharePoint, for example, the appliance houses the database on SSD, with content distributed over SSD, SAS, or the cloud.

As for cloud storage, the StorSimple appliances integrate with offerings from Amazon, AT&T, EMC, Iron Mountain and Microsoft Azure. The appliances include data-in-motion and data-at-rest encryption as well as tools for cloud backup and deduplication, according to the company.

Building A Channel

Howells said the company, which launched a channel program earlier this year, works with partners such as Microsoft systems integrators. He said the appliances will open new opportunities for integrators in SharePoint. SharePoint’s storage limitations (Microsoft strongly recommends limiting SharePoint Server 2010 content databases to 200G) shut SharePoint integrators out of customer projects calling for large databases. StorSimple’s cloud storage approach and data deduplication, however, get SharePoint back in the frame.

“We see this as being a great opportunity,” Howells said.

StorSimple’s products include its 1010 appliance, which the company bills as a cloud onramp. The 1U appliance is equipped with solid state integrated storage. The 5010 and 7010 are 2U appliances that come with both SSD and SAS storage.

The 1010 appliance had been available prior to this week, while the 5010 and 7010 devices are commercially available for the first time this week, according to a company spokesman.

StorSimple is at least the third vendor to ship a cloud storage appliance in 2010. Cirtas Systems launched its Bluejet Cloud Storage Controller in September. Nasuni debuted its Filer in February.

The success of appliances will depend on how quickly customers take to the cloud for storing content. Howells believes the public cloud’s economies of scale coupled with the unpredictability of storage requirements for apps like SharePoint will motivate customers. That’s a topic to revisit in 2011.

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