Contemplating IT

Nirvanix - the Enterprise Cloud Storage company has a new management team led by CEO, Scott Genereux. Interestingly, Scott spent much of his career selling storage systems to Enterprise customers. I think that is an important distinction since Nirvanix refers to itself as Enterprise Cloud Storage. It requires someone who understands the challenges of the Enterprise versus someone that is an expert at selling web services. Steve Zivanic is the new VP of Marketing and he worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Scott when they were at Hitachi Data Systems together. This team knows how to sell and market even when they are up against a powerhouse like EMC.

True to form, Steve Zivanic has been on a passionate campaign to get the word out about Nivanix. There are a wave of articles and blogs about how great they are doing all over the web. You can go to the Nirvanix website (www.Nirvanix.com) to see they have 700 customers – some of which are big, big companies storing lots and lots of data. That is all good stuff but you have a number of sources to read about that information. Here is my take on what are some of the coolest and most valuable things about Nirvanix:

1. They have end-to-end solution that makes it extremely easy for companies and organizations to use Cloud Storage. Nirvanix provides an easy to manage complete solution with front-end usability, security, reliability, performance, multi-tenancy and global access combined with back-end controls, reporting, management and analytics.  It isn’t just a storage system that scales and supports HTTP – which so many other vendors tout as their Cloud Platform. Rather, Nirvanix provides a holistic solution designed specifically for businesses to utilize without being cloud experts. This unique and what I believe the market really needs to deploy Cloud Storage for the Enterprise.

2. You can utilize the Nirvanix public cloud storage or you can take their software and actually implement your own private cloud storage service. There are a number of large companies and organizations that want to enable their own private clouds and this meets that need. Nirvanix is also a great solution for managed service providers and this could be a whole new channel for them. The world will be divided in three ways - private cloud storage usage; a hybrid of public and private cloud storage usage; and pure public storage cloud usage. Nirvanix supports all three models.  

3. What is also very powerful is Nirvanix can be integrated with heterogeneous file systems. Essentially it can work with third-party storage systems – which is great for users that want to use existing storage. It is also great for storage vendors – they can partner with Nirvanix and still use their own storage systems. Nirvanix does have its own storage technology but their real value is in the Cloud Storage application – the web services that live above the storage.

4. Nirvanix is field proven.  They have been in the market for a number of years and those 700 plus customers are evidence that it works. This minimizes the risk that every IT professional needs to consider when making a decision to go forward with emerging technologies like Cloud Storage.

Another trend in Cloud Storage for the Enterprise is using open source file systems to build your own. The more technology minded IT professionals working for large organizations are considering Hadoop and Gluster and other extensible, scalable file systems. These companies could leverage Nirvanix instead of building the services, tools and overall applications needed to implement Cloud Storage.

Cloud Storage is a next generation IT infrastructure that is already changing the landscape.  This will continue to happen in obvious and non-obvious ways.  The obvious ways include using cloud storage for backup, DR and archiving. The non-obvious ways include new business models and applications being developed specifically for the cloud.  

Nirvanix is on the curve up and will only get stronger over time.  They have new leadership in place and a board and investors that are charged up and passionate.  

Since there is a climate of acquisition one can only assume that Nirvanix should be of real interest to a number of different major IT vendors. Anyone that is going against EMC should consider partnering with Nirvanix since it can take on Atmos both from a public and private cloud perspective. What should be of concern to the various “big guys” is when Nirvanix gets bought out it will be a two horse race in a market that is inevitable and massive.