OSS Launches Open Source Storage Middleware Product

There’s a new—or old, depending on how you look at it—open source storage provider (back) in town. Open Source Storage (OSS), which was founded in 2001 and disbanded in 2007, is now back in the storage game with a solution aimed at allowing enterprises to deploy open source storage technologies on top of commodity storage hardware.

OSS relaunched back in December 2013 under the leadership of Eren Niazi, its original founder. A few weeks later, the company unveiled its first major product, which it calls the Niazi 1.618 Middleware System. Designed to provide compatability between traditional proprietary storage solutions and more flexible, less expensive open source alternatives, the middleware software provides a bridge “that allows enterprises to expand storage with open source technology while continuing to use their current storage filing systems,” according to OSS’s description.

That kind of solution could prove attractive as a growing array of open source technologies offer next-generation features for enterprise storage, yet enterprises lack the capital to swap out their entire storage infrastructure with new hardware built for the open standards. Solutions such as OSS’s make it possible to reconcile budget constraints—and commodity hardware—with the need for the latest software technology.

During its first incarnation, OSS counted major names including Facebook, Shutterfly, NASA, KPMG, the U.S. Army and Lockheed Martin among its customers, according to a statement from the company. It has yet to announce any major partnerships in the short time since its relaunch, but it has reported the sale of “over 50 million securities to private investors” in exchange for funding, although it did not disclose the amount of cash actually raised.

The 1.618 in the name of OSS’s flagship product, by the way, isn’t a byzantine versioning number. It’s the golden ratio. And the product is named, of course, after OSS founder Eren Niazi, whom the company calls a “leader in the Open Source movement.” I haven’t come across his name in any of the seminal histories I’ve read of open source software, but if his company succeeds the second time around in the lucrative open storage ecosystem, perhaps he will make a bigger impression.