Primary Data Nets $40M, Launches DataSphere 2.0

Primary Data announced a $40 million funding round and released version 2.0 of its DataSphere software platform.

After receiving an initial $50 million in 2013 the company will use the new funds to continue build out its sales team and business. The $40 million funding was split between $20 million led by Pelion Ventures and a $20 million line of credit.

DataSphere is the company's enterprise metadata engine for bringing machine learning into data management by sitting in between enterprise applications and on-premise storage and cloud storage, providing metadata driven data placement, tiering and protection service.

"Automating data management through an intelligent data fabric that spans different types of storage is critical to enabling enterprises to fully leverage their data while finally solving storage complexity,” said Blake Modersitzki, Managing Director at Pelion Venture Partners. “With DataSphere, Primary Data is leading the industry in bringing intelligence to data management across the enterprise and into the cloud, and we are proud to invest in the transformation Primary Data is delivering for its innovative customers.” 

The version 2.0 release of DataSphere brings many new features for bringing intelligence into data management. With the selection of data objectives the new release now provides deep control capabilities with Objective Expressions. DataSphere says version 2 enables parallel performance and support for multiple clouds, and adds support for SMB 2.1 and 3.1, as well as Active Directory. 

Chief Scientist for Primary Data Steve Wozniak said, “DataSphere 2.0 makes it simple for enterprises to finally automate how data is managed by using the intelligence that has been sitting right there in your metadata all along.”

Primary Data also noted that it continues to expand its partnerships with Amazon AWS, Cloudian, Google, Scality, NetApp and VMware to help joint customers get the right data to the right place at the right time.

Primary Data was recently listed in the Gartner 2017 Hype Cycle for Storage Technologies. 

Cassatt - Gartner's Cool Vendor 2008

A "cool" company on my list for some time is Cassatt. When I first came across the company and its product offering I was royally confused. Based on my experience and use / observed use of servers, their product was just plain silly. In the right environment though, I have now come to see how it is truly a unique approach to energy savings and cool software on top of that.

Gartner's Cool Vendor Report lists those companies that are Insightful, innovative and intriguing. They recently named Cassatt and Tata Consultancy Services to their "Cool Vendors in Sourcing and IT Services 2008" report.

"The Cassatt solution is based around the Cassatt Active Response product line, software to improve the operation of large data centers in manageable stages. Customers can start by increasing data center energy efficiency, using Cassatt’s software to safely and intelligently power off servers when they aren’t needed. This approach, based on the Cassatt Active Power Management™ technology, can reduce power usage in your data center by 30 to 50 percent while complementing your existing energy efficiency activity."

Check out the press release here

Netex Drives Data Center Acceleration Market

High-end data replication over long distances at rates above OC-12, ensuring data reliability and integrity -- cool. DR over IP WAN Optimization company Netex has reaffirmed their commitment to the data center acceleration market. Netex and the need for optimizing connections between data centers was called out in Gartner's most recent Magic Quadrant report for low-end branch office WAN optimization technologies.

With special attention towards large enterprise customers, there are many easy justifications for products like HyperIP from Netex:

"Replicating enterprise data sets between data centers with NetEx ensures that compliance standards for records maintenance are achieved, eliminating exposure to regulatory sanctions and lawsuits. Additionally, by simplifying and accelerating data replication as part of a corporate business continuity and disaster recovery plan, HyperIP helps companies slash expenses for data management chores that account for 21 percent of overall IT costs, according to one study."

Transfer speed in HyperIP has been qualified by a regular who's who list in the enterprise data management applications market: EMC, Hitachi, IBM, Netapp, Oracle and Symantec.

Privately held Netex is a spin-off of StorageTek and is based in Maple Grove Minnesota. Last December they unveiled a version of HyperIP for VMWare ESX server. "With HyperIP for VMware, customers can scale performance up to 600x with no hardware upgrades, the company says."

Last September I looked at the WAN Optimization market and some highlighted products -- this will continue to be a hot market in 2008.

Gartner Data Center Conference -- Polls

Here are some more Garnter Data Center Conference Polls that I found interesting:

Question: When are you starting a CMDB?
Responses:

• Now: 41%
  
• 6 months: 7%
  
• 6-12 months: 18%
  
• end of 2009: 21%
  
• not planning: 13%

Question: Who is your CMDB Vendor?
Response:

• BMC: 22%
• CA: 9%
• IBM: 7%
• HP: 21%
• Managed Objects: 1%
• Home grown: 14%
• Service desk: 15%
• Other (NI2, Caimit, Service-now.com): 1%

Question: What are your top Network Operations Pressures?

• VoIP: 8%
• MPLS: 8%
• Wireless: 12%
• Compliance: 3%
• Security: 3%
• Network Faults: 15%
• Proactive Prevention and Performance: 27%
• Meeting SLA's: 12%

Question: What is your #1 priority for 2008?

• Network Device configuration: 8%
• Network Operations Management: 32%
• Performance Reporting: 20%
• Traffice Analysis: 11%
• Capacity Planning/emulation: 16%
• Other: 3%
• No Plans: 10%

Gartner - BCP Session

Yesterday I attended an informative session on Business Continuity Planning. I loved their definition of Business Continuity Management -- because it encompasses SO much that people tend to forget about. Their organization groups under BCP were:

1. Business Recovery
2. Contingency Planning
3. Business Operations
   
4. Information Security Management
5. Pandemic Planning
6. Crisis Management (very important one with lots of sub components)
7. Damage Assesment
8. IT Disaster Recovery

Here are a couple of polls that were taken of the attendees in the session.

Question: Do you have a business continuity Management Office?
1. Yes: 55% 2. No: 44$ 3. Don't Know: 1%

If you have a BCM office, where does it fit within the organization?

1. CFO (11%)
2. CIO (26%)
3. CISO (10%)
4. COO (17%)
5. CRO (Chief Risk Officer): 17%
6. Don't Know (6%)
7. Other (13%)

BTW: Having it in the COO office is the ideal according to Gartner.

Finally....you have heard me tout ITIL before and it looks like I need to catch up on ITIL v3. Version 3 includes continuity management guidelines.

Gartner Conference - Polls

Just a quick post to give some background on the Gartner Data Center Conference that I am currently attending. During the opening comments and first keynote they took a few polls of the audience.

I think these are important --- to profile the average attendee and show real data about the industry. Here is what was covered so far:

Poll Question: What is the make up of your Data Center?
Responses:
40% Mainframe, Linux, Unix, Windows
25% Unix, Linux, Windows
10% Mainfram, Unix, Windows
10% Unix, Windows
(I couldn't write fast enough to get the rest :) )

Poll Question: Do you have server consolidation projects?
Responses:
1. No Plans -- 3%
2. Looking into it -- 17%
3. Project Under way -- 50%
4. Already completed a project, may do another -- 30%

Poll Question: How long have you worked in IT?
Responses:
< 2 yrs: 1%
2-5yrs: 2%
5-10yrs: 8%
11-20yrs: 35%
21-30yrs: 40%
31-40yrs: 13%
40+yrs: 1%

Poll Question: Do you have a long term strategy for Infrastructure and Operations?
Responses:
Yes: 42%
No: 37%
Unsure: 21%

Gartner Data Center Conference

Just a quick post to say that I will be attending the 26th annual Gartner Data Center Conference. This is being held in Las Vegas, Nov.27-30. I have my schedule ready to go and am really excited about attending this conference.

If anyone else will be attending and would like to meet up -- drop me an email.

Data Center Outsourcing

I ran across a link in my email recently that was interesting, so I continued reading it. EDS has received a "Strong-Positive" rating from Gartner. This comes from the 2007 release of their "MarketScope for Data Center Outsourcing, North America".

EDS was one of 17 companies evaluated and manages over 100 data centers worldwide. Check out their press release here

I of course didn't have a spare $1,995 laying around for the full report, so I searched around - and found a good summary of the report. Unisys was listed on the report ("Positive" rating) and had the summary on their web site. There were a few companies I didn't recognize. I suppose I think too much of the colo companies and not those providing a data center as an outsourced service.

I wish I was able to purchase the report - it looks very thorough and does a nice job of spelling out the evaluation criteria and market segment. Here are some of the companies (with links) that were evaluated in the report:

Acxiom
ACS
Atos Origin
CapGemeni
CGI
CSC
EDS
HP
IBM
Infocrossing
Maintech
Northrup Grumman
Perot Systems
Savvis
Siemens
Sungard
Unisys
Vericenter (recently acquired by Sungard)