Hello! Cloud Controller byebye! Cloud Gateway

Call them cloud controllers, cloud storage implementations, or a swarm of storage. Just don't call them cloud storage gateways, at least not when you're selling these smart cloud storage systems.

As the cloud storage market continues to evolve, and manufacturers are not just positioning themselves to put data into the cloud, the term "gateway" has been deliberately shunned by startups, who view themselves as rivals for companies like EMC and NetApp.

"The term ' gateway ' was good at first, because all of this was on the way to the cloud," said Arun Taneja, founder and chief advisor to Taneja Group, "and frankly, none of them knew what they wanted to become when they grew up." Nor did they find use cases. ”

Some startups were sprouting about three years ago, selling gateways as an easy way to bring customers clouds storage. Including Ctera NX, Nasuni, Panzura, Storsimple, Twinstrata, and Microsoft acquired Storsimple in late 2012.

Now these vendors are looking to enter the enterprise, so they need enterprise performance. In December, Panzura a millions of dollar deal with the U.S. Attorney's Executive office, which industry analysts said was a huge success and could open the door to other areas of governance. Panzura attributed the success of the deal to the global cloud storage system and accepted the Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 security certification.

Panzura CEO Randy Chou says he sees NetApp as his primary competitor, not other "gateway" vendors, because Panzura tends to seek enterprise-class networked-attached storage (NAS) functionality as a primary storage customer.

"The whole market I feel hurt by the terminology gateway," Chou said. " He prefers "cloud controller" or "Cloud storage Controller".

Panzura is not the only vendor that expects to be a full service storage vendor. Cloud controller vendors have declared that the only difference between their storage systems and EMC or NetApp is that they move data to the cloud rather than the local disk array.

"The original Cloud Gateway Vendor program is that they support us and we move it into the cloud," said Marc Staimer, founder and senior analyst at Dragon Slayer Consulting, "If I can get into the cloud with NetApp or EMC, why do I think about anything else?" But if I come in and say I want to compete with EMC, in this way, all I have to do is put data into the cloud, and I put the data in a cloud in a different way from EMC, that's the difference. ”

So what's the difference between a previous gateway and a current controller? Named after snapshots, clusters of replication, inline data deduplication, inline compression, and WAN optimizations, "Taneja said of many gateway provider performance.

These cloud controllers operate in different markets and have a variety of specialties. "The reality is that for everyone, it's possible to expect Amazon, not a developing feature," Taneja said, "Twinstrata and Nasuni have split into primary storage." Panzura embarked on the road of collaboration. They basically say ' put us in front of the cloud, a variety of different clouds, put us on demand, and we'll give you a collaborative product. The end result is that they have the best collaborative product in the market. ”

Panzura Recent FIPS certification is time-consuming and expensive, and third parties must review the encryption password to ensure that it is passed. "I gave them a lot of prestige," said Staimer, Dragon Slayer Consulting, "which opened the market for them." ”

No one is exactly what Microsoft would do to Storsimple, a vendor that gathers as a storage device or a "cloud san" to advertise itself, like a regular storage matrix, installed on a customer's web site while putting data into the cloud.

"I think it's clear to the future of these guys," Taneja said, "but none of them wants EMC or NetApp to buy them." These guys are bad for matrix business. ”

No matter what the manufacturer or analyst thinks, not all customers deny the term gateway. St. John's Prep Information Services director, Christopher Butler, ran Twinstrata Cloudarray as a virtual device link to Amazon S3 for backup. Butler said he could use the cloud to get rid of offline storage. He does not use Cloudarray as primary storage, but says he will like this option if his storage needs grow.

I think it's a gateway, "Butler said." We're using fine equipment. is to speed up another virtual machine problem, link iSCSI LUNs, and now my storage has dynamic stock. I take it as a gateway, no matter how much storage I need. The