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NetApp and VAST Data take rivalry to the F1 racetrack

By
Chris Mellor
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NetApp has partnered with the Aston Martin Aramco Racing team and VAST Data is linking up with the Williams Racing team as the two file storage suppliers duke it out in Formula One.

Formula 1 sponsorships are big business in the world of motor sports. Businesses that sponsor F1 teams include financial, telecom, tech, and consumer brands wanting exposure to F1’s global audience. Examples include Petronas (Mercedes), Aramco (Aston Martin), and Oracle (Red Bull). Many sponsorship contracts are valued in the tens of millions on an annual basis. Title and principal sponsorships can be $50 million-plus per year with top teams. NetApp and the Aston Martin Aramco team have renewed a three-year agreement where NetApp is the team’s Global Data Infrastructure Partner.

Clare Lansley and George Kurian, NetApp CEO
Clare Lansley and George Kurian, NetApp CEO

Clare Lansley, Aston Martin Aramco CIO, said: “NetApp has been with us all the way on this journey together and are fundamental to our trackside operations and at our Headquarters at the AMRTC in Silverstone. We use data to improve our performance and go faster and NetApp’s work with the team is vital to this success.”

We’re told that the Aston Martin Aramco team collects data from hundreds of sensors, including real-time performance statistics such as track temperature, tire degradation, and aerodynamics. Instant access to that data enables the team to adapt its race strategy in real time. Sharing data between the track and team headquarters is a mission-critical function.

Aston Martin Aramco reached the podium eight times, scored 280 points, and finished fifth in the Constructors’ Championship in the 2023 Formula One season, partly by using the data NetApp stores and manages. NetApp provides its FlexPod, Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Cloud Insights, and Storage Workload Security products and services to the Aston Martin team.

We’re told the sheer speed at which Aston Martin Aramco can harness its stored data gives it a competitive advantage. NetApp CMO Gabie Boko said: “When Aston Martin returned to the Formula One circuit after more than 60 years away, they needed a technology partner to help them rise to every moment, both on and off the track. NetApp provides Aston Martin Aramco with an intelligent data infrastructure that runs at the speed of Formula One.” 

VAST and Williams

VAST Data has joined Williams as an Official Partner and technology vendor for the 2024 season and beyond. The logo will be plastered on on driver overalls and the FW46 cars driven by Alex Albon and Logan Sargeant in the upcoming Formula One season.

The yet-to-be revealed FW46 car for the 2024 season
The yet-to-be revealed FW46 car for the 2024 season

In a typical race weekend, the hundreds of sensors on a Williams F1 car will generate 1 TB of data, and there are two cars per race. Williams said designing and simulation testing the car generates hundreds more terabytes. Understanding the in-race and design-and-test data is critical to on-track success, and VAST Data’s skills in managing and processing large datasets can help optimize the team’s performance, we’re told.

Peter Gadd, VP International at VAST Data, said in a statement: “VAST Data is thrilled to be an Official Partner of Williams Racing. This partnership symbolises our commitment to pushing the boundaries of technology and performance. Williams Racing’s legacy of innovation and excellence in Formula 1 aligns perfectly with our vision of revolutionising data-driven insights in high-stakes environments.

“By bringing our advanced data management capabilities to the forefront of motor racing, we are not just sponsoring a team; we are driving a new era of technological synergy between data science and the pinnacle of motorsport.”

Pat Fry, Williams Racing CTO, said in his statement: “F1 teams generate enormous amounts of data every day, so we’re privileged to partner with Vast Data whose expertise in managing and processing large datasets will play a crucial role in optimizing our performance. The collaboration will allow us to harness the full potential of our data and help move us up the grid.”

The Williams team has faded since the glory days of the ’90s when its drivers won world championships and Williams itself won Constructors’ championships. The team was bought by private equity business Dorilton Ventures for around $200 million in 2021 and aims to revive its racing fortunes.

Not every sponsorship is a direct cash payment. Some sponsorships involve companies providing technical support, R&D partnerships, or supplying components to the team. Exact details of the sponsorship arrangements for VAST Data and NetApp are confidential.

The two storage suppliers are fighting a marketing war using Formula One racing team proxies.

Rubrik planning IPO after US fraud investigation completes

By
Chris Mellor
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Rubrik is planning an IPO in April when a fraud investigation in the US should be finished, according to a Reuters report.

Bipul Sinha.

The firm began its startup life as a data protector with backup and restore software, and has since moved into cyber security and resilience. It was founded in 2014 by ex-venture capitalist and CEO Bipul Sinha, CTO Arvind ‘Nytro’ Nithrakashyap, VP engineering Arvind Jain and Soham Mazumdar. It has raised in excess of $550 million with an E-round for $260 million in 2019 followed by a Microsoft equity investment in 2021, at a valuation of around $4 billion. The business has grown quickly, having gained >5,000 customers and $600 million annual recurring revenue. It hired bankers – Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Citigroup – to work on an IPO in June last year according to an earlier Reuters report and has filed IPO papers with the SEC.

Bloomberg suggested in September last year that it could IPO by the end of 2023 and Pitchbook notes Rubrik has raised about $1 billion in funding.

Sinha has fought hard to keep Rubrik on top of emerging trends in the market. It announced a Ruby Gen AI copilot in November last year, adopted zero trust principles in its product, provided a ransomware guarantee, moved into SaaS app data protection, set up an MSP business, and acquired Laminar for its data security posture management software.

Rubrik competes with legacy data protection vendors, such as Commvault, Dell and Veritas, relative monster newcomer Veeam, Druva, fellow startup Cohesity – which has evolved into a data management company as well as espousing cyber resilience – and a mass of smaller suppliers such as HYCU and Asigra. Cohesity made an IPO filing at the end of 2021 but no IPO has yet taken place.

Reuters based its report on people familiar with the matter, and said the US Department of Justice is investigating a former sales division employee and the diversion of an undisclosed amount of funds from 110 US government contracts, worth $46 million, into a separate business vehicle. If the investigation finishes in March then Rubrik, which is co-operating with the Justice Department, could run its IPO in April.

Neither Rubrik, Microsoft nor the US Department of Justice commented on the Reuters story. When we asked Rubrik a spokesperson replied: “We decline to comment.”

Data steward Rimage pivoting from optical disk publishing to data lifecycle management

By
Chris Mellor
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Established optical disc-based archiver Rimage is pivoting to data management with an AI-powered digital asset metadata extraction and search product announced, and advanced optical storage in its roadmap.

Rimage describes itself as a global leader in on-demand enterprise and consumer digital publishing to CD, DVD, and Blu-ray discs and USB sticks with 194 channel partners and over 20,000 systems installed by more than 3,000 customers in law enforcement, government, manufacturing health and finance. It has just launched its SOPHIE digital lifecycle management system and has an Electronic Laser Storage (ELS) initiative underway focussed on emerging optical disk technology. Rimage presented its SOPHIA product and ELS plans to an IT Press Tour in Silicon Valley in January. Before we examine these it is instructive to understand Rimage’s history and grasp a key takeaway.

Rimage history

It was founded in 1987 as IXI inc. in Minnesota, with its founders having bought floppy disk manufacturing assets from the previous owner. This evolved into CD-ROM printing, with colored cartridge labels and also direct thermal printing in the disks, and  CD-R and DVD-R duplication equipment. Rimage went public in 1992. The diskette business became loss-making after 1995 and it put its main focus on the duplication systems, and full-color images on CDs. DVDs came along in 2000 and Rimage produced DVD burners and photo-quality printing systems for opticaldisk labels. High-definition Blu-ray disk support was added in 2007. It acquired Qumu in 2011 for $57 million to enter the enterprise video content industry. Rimage changed its name to Qumu in 2013 but then ran into problems with its declining disk publishing business while the video content business had healthy prospects.

Rick Bunce.

Qumu Corp sold its Rimage assets to private equity business Equus Holdings in 2014 for $23 million, with Equus ressurrecting the Rimage name. It did not prosper as well as hoped and Christopher Rence was appointed Rimage CEO in 2020 to continue an ongoing transformation. The pivot to digital data asset management is taking place as part of Rence’s strategy and product line restructuring. COO and CRO Rick Bunce told the Press Tour audience that, like Smith Corona with its typewriters, Rimage had to change. It has been retreating from some verticals – eg finance – as its product offer stagnated, and needs new products.

The takeaway to bear in mind is this: Rimage has always been about the production of disks – from floppy disks through CDs and DVD to Blu-ray disks. Although it uses optical disks for archiving data it has not been involved with archiving per se, specifically with archiving software and archiving data to tape. Its DNA is centered on disks and not ribbons – of digital tape. SOPHIA could change that.

The pivot

Bunce told the Press Tour that AI is a new trend, some of which is LLM (Large Language Model)-based and other purpose-built AI. He identified AI that is used for storage, and storage that is used for AI, and asserted that purpose-built AI is what’s going to matter and machine learning is key.

Rimage’s broader strategy has hardware (Enterprise LaserStorage) and software (Data Lifecycle Management) elements that help customers to manage data from birth to destruction. Rimage now sees itself as a digital steward and thinks the data lifecycle management (DLM)/document asset management (DAM) market is fragmented with many suppliers and no one dominant vendor. That means a new entrant can prosper.

it has two product categories in its data stewardship portfolio: DLM and ELS. SOPHIE is the first product in the DLM area and is AI-powered.

SOPHIA

SOPHIA is from the Greek for knowledge and wisdom. Rimage’s product is the first of a set of modules, software abstractions above storage hardware, and is concerned with Digital Asset Management (DAM).

Rimage claims it seamlessly automates data ingestion from any source and builds a global repository to organize and optimize digital assets in a streamlined and secure way. The product uses AI to help it extract and generate contextual metadata from ingested digital assets and users can also customize filter fields, upload requirements and workflow controls to make its operation more efficient. Search is AI-powered with metadata filtering capabilities. There are permissions controls to help with security and governance features to aid compliance.

SOPHIA has file syncronization features to make files available to any location, whatever the network connection, syncs all changes back to the SOPHIA library. It works with any native Windows or OSX (macOS) application, eliminating any need for plug-ins or third-party applications. Linux support is coming.

SOPHIA integrates into all of the Rimage family of products and supports Al–driven data management.

The software is not entirely home-grown. Bunce explained: “We use a number of partners bringing infrastructural software into Sophia. We buy or license it and build on top of that. … We will slot the new software into our existing management layer.” One its partners is Germany-based PoINT Software which produces archive software, including software moving archive data to object storage on tape.

SOPHIA covers part of the DLM feature set. Rosen said Destruct (data destruction) is coming soon and Rimage is working hard on developing deeper analytics.

The product uses Google Vision AI and Rimage has written some of its own AI software.

SOPHIA is data agnostic, supporting file, block, object, structured and unstructured data. It has customizable AI features,an API, and flexible deployment, either on-premises, as SaaS or in hybrid form. SaaS SOPHIA can use Azure or AWS or horizontal/vertical MSPs.

ELS

The term ELS, Electronic Laser Storage, refers back to Rimage’s CD/DVD/Blu-ray heritage as all these optical disk drives use lasers for reading and writing. Their use in archiving is falling away because of capacity limitations. Enterprise sales director Jeff Rosen noted: “Blu-ray has a maximum of 200GB/disk. It needs increasing and the density will scale.”

Optical disks can last for 50 years and complement LTO tape by having better (faster) random data access. Tape is not actually physically immutable, Rosen explained, being subject to EMPs (Electro-Magnetic Pulses). Optical disk is a safer medium in this regard. He also observed: “China has a mandate that all of its archive data will be optical disk in five years and not tape [and] China will effectively restart an optical disk industry. A Chinese company is building what we’re doing.”

Also Rosen and Bunce revealed multi-layered optical disk density improvements are coming from suppliers such as Sony, Folio Photonics, and Pioneer. In other words, optical disk is going to make a comeback. But these products don’t exist yet.

He dismissed Microsoft’s Project Silica though, saying: “Microsoft has abandoned glass – it’s buried maybe in R&D.”

Comment

The ELS product, when it arrives, being optical disk-based will provide an upgrade path for Rimage’s installed base of >3,000 customers with 20,000 or so optical disk printing and publishing machines.

The general theme of DLM and archiving software is that it is media-agnostic. Digital archives can live in tape libraries, on optical disk, even on spun-down disk, or on whatever devices are used by the public clouds underneath their S3 or Blob storage abstractions – be they disk or tape. 

Based on this thought, Rimage could embrace LTO tape technology, also object-to-tape technology, and set up alliances with tape library system vendors such as Quantum and SpectraLogic. It should perhaps join the Active Archive Alliance and learn what the archive software players are doing. 

Yes, the data lifecycle management market is fragmented, with players including Komprise, Datadobi, Data Dynamics, SpectraLogic, Arcitecta, Quantum, and StorMagic. But it is also quite mature in a software sense. We can expect all the existing archive software system players to add AI features to their products, with AI becoming table stakes. It is already happening in the data protection market. On the hardware side, new glass-based media technologies will likely come along, but the archive storage software layer will adapt to them and not be revolutionized or replaced.

If Rimage now sees itself as a data lifecycle management steward then turning its face away from the tape archive system market may seem like it is deliberately missing an opportunity.

Bootnote

Rimage has a range of additional products, which include:

  • Rimage Protection Shield for cyber security;
  • Rimage Data Solutions to gather and ingest digital assets from various devices onto multiple storage platforms;
  • Rimage Data Preservation for long-term retention.

Storage news ticker – February 4

By
Chris Mellor
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Data protector Acronis has become a member of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), an ecosystem of independent software vendors (ISV) and managed security service providers (MSSP). MISA members have integrated their products with Microsoft security technology to build a better defense against increasing cybersecurity threats.

…

Dell’Oro Group predicts that the SmartNIC market will exceed $5 billion by 2028. Accelerated computing will continue to push the boundaries in server connectivity, demanding port speeds of 400 Gbps and higher speeds.

  • The total Ethernet Controller and Adapter market, excluding the AI backend network market, is forecast to exceed $8 billion by 2028.
  • The majority of accelerated servers will have server access speeds of 400 Gbps and higher by 2028.
  • SmartNICs are expected to cannibalize standard NICs during the forecast period.
Jim O'Dorisio, HPE storage exec
Jim O’Dorisio

… 

HPE has hired Jim O’Dorisio as its SVP and GM for storage, replacing the promoted Tom Black. O’Dorisio comes from being SVP and GM at Iron Mountain. He was VP and COO of business and technology at EMC before that, in the period before Dell bought EMC, spending 14 years at EMC altogether. He’ll report to Fidelma Russo, EVP of Hybrid Cloud at HPE, as does Black. O’Dorisio and Russo overlapped at Iron Mountain and EMC.

…

Storage industry analyst firm DCIG has named Infinidat‘s InfiniBox and InfiniGuard solutions as among the top five cyber secure backup targets. DCIG reviewed 27 different 2 PB+ cyber secure backup targets as part of its independent research in the enterprise market where ransomware and malware are first attacking backup targets to hinder an enterprise from recovering from a cyberattack. DCIG opted to solely focus its report on cyber secure backup targets that supported NAS interfaces. The top five suppliers/products were ExaGrid EX189, Huawei OceanProtect X9000, Infinidat InfiniBox/InfiniGuard, Nexsan Unity NV10000, and VAST Data’s Data Platform. The “2024-25 DCIG TOP 5 2PB+ Cyber Secure Backup Targets Global Edition” report is now available here.

…

Neurelo emerged from stealth, introducing a comprehensive and extensible data access platform that enhances developer productivity by simplifying and accelerating the way they build and run applications with databases. The Neurelo Cloud Data API Platform is generally available as of today, providing auto-generated, purpose-built REST and GraphQL APIs, AI-generated custom-query endpoints, deep query observability, and Schema as Code. The company has secured $5 million in seed funding led by Foundation Capital with participation from Cortical Ventures, Secure Octane Investments, and Aviso Ventures.

Torsten Volk, managing research director, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), said: “Neurelo turns data sources into centrally controlled and governed APIs that developers can simply consume instead of having to worry about the intricacies of the specific type of database. The ability for DBAs, cloud admins, IAM admins, and other relevant roles to ensure consistency and compliance of individual databases organization-wide instead of chasing after each data source separately is a significant upside of the Neurelo platform.”

…

Belgian company MT-C S.A., which produces the Nodeum HPC data mover product, is renaming itself Nodeum.

…

Own Company, a SaaS data protection supplier, launched a global Channel Partner Program so resellers and system integrators can prevent their customers from losing mission-critical data and metadata. With automated backups and rapid recovery, Own partners will be equipped with the resources, skills, and support necessary to generate new lines of business and increase profit margins.

…

Scale-out filer Qumulo announced the availability of Superna Data Security Edition for Qumulo and its Ransomware Defender, which automates real-time detection of malicious behaviors, false positives, and other events consistent with ransomware access patterns for both SMB and NFS files. Superna Data Security Edition for Qumulo detects malicious behavior at the onset (often referred to as the “burrowing event”) and also automates access lockout. Superna’s native integrations with SIEM, SOAR, and ticketing platforms automatically alerts administrators and other users involved in incident response, providing them with the information required to accurately prioritize the incident. Get more information here.

…

Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers met Seagate CFO Gianluca Romano and told subscribers: “Seagate is not focused on, nor does it expect, its leadership position in HAMR-based HDDs to drive nearline market share expansion.” No need for Western Digital and Toshiba to worry then.

…

The Financial Times reports that SK hynix will build a plant in Indiana to stack DRAM chips into HBM units for packaging with Nvidia GPUs in other, possibly TSMC, plants in the USA.

…

The SNIA’s Storage Management Initiative (SMI) announced that the Swordfish v1.2.6 bundle is now available for public review. Swordfish provides a standardized approach to manage storage and servers in hyperscale and cloud infrastructure environments. Swordfish v1.2.6 key features include:

  • New “NVMe-oF and Swordfish” white paper, which discusses how NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) configurations are represented in Swordfish Application Programming Interface (API).
  • New metrics for FileSystem, StoragePool, StorageService, and enhancements to VolumeMetrics.
  • New mapping and masking models using Connections in the Fabric model and deprecates StorageGroups.
  • Support for new volume properties: ProvidingStoragePool, ChangeStripSize, Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) to manage reservations
  • Enhancements to NVMe Domain Management, including ALUA support.
  • Updates to NVMe namespaces, such as simplified Logical Block Address (LBA) Format representation and multiple namespace management.

…

Startup Zilliz, which supplies the open source Milvus vector database, has a forthcoming Zilliz Cloud service update, with RAG/GenAI, recommendation systems, and cybersecurity/fraud detection capability. RAG/GenAI will empower autonomous agents replacing human support agents. Recommendation systems will be powering ads, product, and news recommendations based on user preferences and actions taken. The cybersecurity features will be applied in banking transactions and antivirus systems to quickly identify anomalies in new data by finding similarities within a short time frame.

Weka bags another GPU-as-a-Service farm customer

By
Chris Mellor
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UK-based NexGen Cloud has signed up Weka to provide parallel access filesystem software for its GPU-as-a-Service customers, becoming Weka’s third GPU cloud farm customer.

GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) operations are spinning up in response to the generative AI training and inferencing boom. They buy thousands of Nvidia GPUs and rent them out on a pay-per-use basis. Enterprises buying smaller numbers of GPUs or GPU servers are finding that the supply is constrained because Nvidia can’t get enough of them built to meet the demand. NexGen Cloud, started up in 2020, has one of the largest GPU fleets in Europe – including H100 GPUs – and it’s powered by renewable energy sources. Nexgen says its services are up to 75 percent more cost-effective than legacy cloud providers. Weka’s Data Platform is a fast scale-out and parallel filesystem with integrated data services.

Weka president Jonathan Martin explained in a statement: “GPU cloud providers like NexGen Cloud will play a critical role in accelerating the next wave of AI innovation. The Weka Data Platform helps GPUs to run at peak performance and efficiency, reducing energy consumption and giving customers a much more sustainable way to run enterprise AI workloads – even at extreme scale.”

Weka NexGen Cloud video screengrab.

NexGen has an existing HyperStack offering and is developing an AI Supercloud. Both use Weka’s filesystem to provide file storage for customer data. NexGen plans to invest $1 billion to build its AI Supercloud in Europe, with $576 million already committed in hardware orders with suppliers. Deployment in European datacenters began late last year.

Chris Starkey, cofounder and CEO at NexGen Cloud, recalled: “When we started building our AI Supercloud solution, we looked at several data platforms and parallel filesystem solutions. The environment’s extreme scale and performance demands quickly removed other vendors from consideration.”

Weka being software-defined and hardware-agnostic was a characteristic that resonated with Starkey. “The Weka Data Platform immediately stood out, not only for its exceptional performance and low latency but also for its ability to maximize the efficiency of our GPU cloud with a hardware-agnostic, innovative software solution. It enabled us to leverage existing hardware investments and power all of our cloud services as efficiently and sustainably as possible, which is core to our mission.”

Weka competitor VAST Data has benefited from GPU cloud farm adoption, counting CoreWeave, Lambda Labs and Genesis Cloud as customers. Its pitch is that standard NFS is easier to use than parallel filesystems, like Weka’s Data Platform. Weka’s pitch is that its software provides very high performance, is hardware-agnostic, and has lots of data services.

Lambda Labs also has a storage deal with DDN.

Weka has existing filesystem supply deals with two North American GPUaaS providers: Applied Digital (under Sai Computing) and Iris Energy – a Canadian bitcoin miner and GPUaaS operator with datacenters in Canada, the US and Australia. Incidentally, Iris Energy also uses renewable energy sources.

Find out more about NexGen Cloud’s GPU cloud offerings powered by Weka here.

Ex-Veeam CTO set to rock up at Snyk

By
Chris Mellor
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Veeam CTO Danny Allan

Danny Allan, the now-former chief technology officer at Veeam, is moving to developer code security business Snyk. 

Snyk’s CEO, Peter Mackay, posted a comment on Allan’s LinkedIn post about his departure from Veeam, talking up the “next chapter” of Allan’s career “with his friends at Snyk”.

Mackay was co-CEO and President at Veeam from July 2016 to November 2018 and worked at VMware, Desktone, IBM and Watchfire before that. Allan was also at Veeam during the same period, and has spent time at VMware, Desktone, IBM and Watchfire too. The pair of execs appear to go way back.

Danny Allan.

Adi Sharabani, who also used to work at Watchfire and IBM, became a Snyk investor and advisor in November 2018 and remains in these roles, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also was appointed as Snyk’s CTO in May 2022 and left that role in June last year. So Snyk has a CTO vacancy and Allan is moving to the position.

A Snyk spokesperson told B&F: ”Danny is joining Snyk as its new CTO on Tuesday.” That will be February 6 and Snyk will make a formal announcement then.

Snyk was founded in Tel-Aviv and London in 2015 by Assaf Hefetz, Danny Grander, Guy Podjarny, and Jacob Tarango. Podjarny was the founding CEO and he gave way to Peter Mackay, who was an investor in the company, in June 2019. The headquarters are located in Boston.

The business has raised $1.2 billion in funding, according to Crunchbase, with the last G-round in 2022 pulling in $196.5 million to give Snyk a $7.4 billion valuation. However an earlier $304 million F-round in 2021 was at a higher valuation of $8.5 billion. There was a $25 million corporate round last year with ServiceNow the investor.

Privately-owned Snyk reportedly achieved a 153 percent revenue increase from 2021 to 2022 to $147 million, when it had in excess of 2,300 customers. It had 1,135 employees at the end of 2022 but laid off 128 of them in April 2023.

Researcher proposes DNA-based computing platform

By
Chris Mellor
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A researcher at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has devised a microfluidic lab on a chip that can perform artificial neural network (ANN) computation on data stored in DNA.

DNA storage relies on data being stored as specific combinations of the four nucleobases – cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine (A), and thymine (T) – found in the double helix formation in the DNA biopolymer molecule. One method has pairs of these nucleobases symbolizing binary ones and zeros. Amlan Ganguly, computer engineering department head in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering, co-authored a scientific paper in which he envisions “a computing platform using DNA molecules that are capable of computation in-situ without the need for domain conversion of information from DNA to electronics.”

Ganguly states: “DNA is excellent at storing information, in fact, it is much better than the electronic modes of memory because it is about 3-to-6 orders of magnitude more compact than most memory hardware that we have; it is also much more reliable and durable.”

He adds: “We proposed to represent numbers through concentrations of solutions containing specifically manipulated DNA molecules and computing operations as manipulation of DNA molecules – operations like addition and multiplication and other non-linear functions necessary for network computations can be performed. That is the bridge from storage to computation and using DNA as a vehicle to do the computation.” 

DNA storage diagram
Diagram from Ganguly’s paper

The paper states: “While biochemical reaction representing computations using DNA molecules are several orders of magnitude slower than electronic gates, their data density is 3 orders of magnitude higher and 8 orders of magnitude lower in energy consumption than solid state memory.”

The RIT integrated circuit (IC) based on microfluidics is suited for “highly dense, throughput-demanding bio-compatible applications such as an intelligent Organ-on-Chip or other biomedical applications that may not be latency-critical.”

The research paper abstract says: ”It computes entirely in the molecular domain without converting data to electrical form, making it a form of in-memory computing on DNA. The computation is achieved by topologically modifying DNA strands through the use of enzymes called nickases.”

Data is represented stochastically through the concentration of the DNA molecules that are nicked at specific sites. A stochastic process has random or probabilistic dynamics over time, and the randomness is modeled mathematically to study the statistical properties of the process. The probabilities of different outcomes can be analyzed.

Ganguly says DNA computation and storage uses less energy than electronic storage and computation: “We are in the age of big data that needs to be stored somewhere. We don’t think that more datacenters are the answer, or even the best answer. Each datacenter requires the equivalent of a city block of power. Building, maintaining, and operating more traditional datacenters is not sustainable.”

Comment

DNA storage has little chance of replacing electronic storage media such as disk and solid state drives, which have millisecond-class data access speeds, and DRAM and CPU/GPU computation operate at microsecond-class speeds or faster. This is because reading and writing with DNA, meaning sequencing and synthesizing DNA molecules, is slow. It needs hours. Ganguly admits that computation using biochemical reactions is several orders of magnitude slower than using a CPU or GPU.

VCs embrace continuation funds for longstanding startups

By
Chris Mellor
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Startups that are over ten years old often disappoint their early venture capitalists (VCs) due to prolonged timelines in yielding returns. This locks up their invested cash, making it unavailable for other ventures, like startups with quicker exit potentials.

Silicon Valley VCs are taking a leaf out of the private equity playbook by setting up continuation or secondary funds. These funds purchase investments in mature startups that have not yet exited through acquisition or IPO. The cash is used by the VC to return money to its investment partners, the LPs (Limited Partners), while the continuation fund retains the VC’s holdings in the startup.

According to the UK’s Financial Times, a VC startup investment can have a ten-year run time with a possible two-year extension. After that, and if there is no return prospect, they can shut the startup down or sell their holding at a discount.

Here is a table, not an exhaustive one, listing some long-life storage startups:

Many appear to be growing, such as ExaGrid, which claims to achieve record revenues virtually every quarter, and yet do not IPO.

Ditto the two object storage suppliers, Cloudian and Scality. They’re growing, but competing with ten-year-old MinIO and its $126 million in funding. Meanwhile, all the main IT storage suppliers, except HPE, have their own object storage tech, meaning an acquisition looks unlikely.

Many storage startups are thus delaying an IPO. Some, due to high valuations, face problematic acquisition exits – as in, who can afford them? Others face an unattractive IPO landscape as investor interests have shifted from the areas popular during their founding days to newer fields like big data analytics and AI. The same can be true of acquisitive businesses that may, these days, also want to invest in generative AI technology businesses and not technology that was a good idea ten years ago.

The continuation fund concept provides a way for worn-out VC investors to get some money back from their holdings in these companies, and thus provide liquidity for new investments.

Insight Partners has set up a continuation fund and moved 32 of the companies in which it had investments into the new fund. Insight’s LPs received $1.3 billion as a result. Potential LPs for a VC will look at the capital it has distributed to LPs in the past and, if this has shrunk, they’ll look elsewhere to for a dependable return on their cash.

In effect, the continuation fund is a way for VCs to transition towards becoming private equity players.

The FT also reports that Lightspeed Venture Partners is talking to investors about setting up a $1 billion continuation fund for ten of its holdings. It has $25 billion in invested assets, including holdings in Nest, Snap, and, of particular relevance to our storage focus, Rubrik. We are not saying that any one of these is heading for continuation fund status. Rubrik seems more likely to IPO than not.

The continuation fund notion raises two questions in our mind. First, will the valuation of VC-held companies change if they are moved into continuation funds?

Secondly, will the continuation fund VCs, adopting more of a private equity mindset, start involving themselves assertively in the management of such startups, and restructure them to become profitable and acquisition-ready? Long-life startups cannot be VC-funded businesses forever. It’s an IPO, acquisition exit, or private equity management via the halfway continuation fund house for them.

Bootnote

The Institutional Limited Partners Association has various continuation fund resources for investors, both limited and general partners in VC funds.

Hitachi Vantara, Cisco sign managed hybrid cloud deal

By
Chris Mellor
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Hitachi Vantara and Cisco are partnering to sell hybrid cloud managed services based on Cisco compute and networking, and Hitachi Vantara’s storage and management software. 

Update. Hitachi Vantara and Cisco have changed the partnership’s original and temprary Hitachi | Cisco Hybrid Cloud name to the Hitachi EverFlex with Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud. 3 February 2024.

The two suppliers set up global partnership agreements last summer, with Hitachi Vantara entering Cisco’s Service Provider and Solution Technology Integrator (STI) partner programs. The intent was to integrate Cisco UCS servers and its Nexus networking products with Hitachi Vantara storage such as the VSP arrays. That way Hitachi Vantara could represent itself as a more of a whole datacenter IT systems supplier and Cisco gets a more effective partner pushing its gear into enterprises.

They have announced the Hitachi EverFlex with Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud with a portfolio of offerings such as infrastructure, IT, storage, and containers as a service, as well as data protection, to be sold on a consumption basis through Hitachi Vantara and Cisco’s partner channels. These offerings can be used on-premises or in the public cloud.

Kimberly King, SVP of strategic partners and alliances at Hitachi Vantara, said in a statement: ”Hitachi EverFlex with Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud is a strategic response to modern enterprise needs. Our ability to deliver both through our partners and Cisco’s network directly tackles the complexity challenge by providing strong IT operational capabilities that can be scaled based on customer data management needs.”

Cisco’s Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed services, added: “Our joint efforts with Hitachi Vantara signify a great opportunity where we’re going beyond cloud capabilities to enable a holistic approach to business transformation.”

Hitachi Vantara is providing a managed services capability, hybrid cloud management, and predictive analytics. The two companies say their combined offering provides hybrid cloud acceleration, automation to increase efficiency, and added security and compliance.

Comment

The background here is that enterprises and public sector organizations tend to use a combination of on-premises and public cloud IT, with consumption-based billing applied. Hitachi Vantara competitors have announced branded hybrid cloud programs such as Dell’s APEX, HPE’s GreenLake, NetApp’s Keystone, and Pure’s EverGreen.

Hitachi Vantara has been busy setting up partnership deals such as one with CTERA for cloud file services, Model9 for mainframe data access, and SQream for massive data set access. 

It wants to sell its own products and services as part of whole systems to its enterprise-class customers. This type of deal is a continuation and reinvention of the old converged infrastructure (CI) deals Cisco participated in with Dell and others back in the day.

Cisco devised its CI-based Cisco+ hybrid cloud service based on existing FlexPod and FlashStack deals with NetApp and Pure Storage in June 2022. The Hitachi EverFlex with Cisco Powered Hybrid Cloud is another example of this kind of deal and shows how long-lived the whole concept can be.

Storage news ticker – January 31

By
Chris Mellor
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Eric Polet, Arcitecta
Eric Polet

Australia-based data manager and orchestrator Arcitecta has hired Eric Polet as Director of Product Marketing. Previously, he served as Product Marketing Manager at Spectra Logic, where he developed strategic product positioning and messaging to differentiate the company’s solutions in the market. Arcitecta has a partnership with SpectraLogic. Polet is based in Longmont, Colorado.

…

Cohesity research found that 97 percent of UK businesses have paid a ransom after a ransomware attack in the last two years, despite almost all companies having a “do not pay” policy. Also 83 percent had been the “victim of a ransomware attack” between June and December, and 73 percent said their company would be willing to pay over £2.4 million ($3 million) to recover data and restore business processes. The research polled more than 900 IT and Security leaders in the US, UK, and Australia.

…

Commvault announced the members of its Cyber Resilience Council chaired by Melissa Hathaway. They are:

  • Roland Cloutier, Principal, The Business Protection Group, former Chief Security Officer, Tik Tok  
  • Shawn Henry, Chief Security Officer, CrowdStrike, former Executive Assistant Director, FBI’s Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch  
  • Mark Hughes, President, Security, DXC Technology  
  • Nancy Wang, Cybersecurity Investor, former GM of AWS Data Protection and Data Security 
  • John Zangardi, CEO, Redhorse Corporation, former CIO, US Department of Homeland Security  

…

Lakehouse supplier Databricks has acquired Einblick, a German startup comprised of experts in machine learning, human-computer interaction, and natural language processing. The Einblick team has spent the last four years pioneering techniques for translating natural language questions into the code, charts, and models needed to generate insights. Einblick built a sophisticated multi-step architecture that processes raw user input, enhances it with relevant contextual information, and breaks it into smaller solvable chunks using SQL, Python, and higher-level logical operators. By joining forces with Databricks, the ideas behind Einblick can be more powerfully extended through integration with the underlying data catalog and Databricks’ Data Intelligence Platform. Data intelligence helps users simply ask questions of their data platform and get detailed, high-quality answers.

…

UK-based Ad Signal is partnering DataCore’s Perifery business unit to provide media customers with seamless deduplication workflows. Ad Signal’s SaaS Match software, which deduplicates copies of video, image, and audio files, can now integrate with Perifery’s Object Matrix to help media teams automatically identify duplicate assets. The news follows Ad Signal’s recent growth spike, with revenues topping £1 million ($1.27 million) as the team has nearly doubled in size. 

…

Kioxia SSDs are on their way to the International Space Station courtesy of HPE. They were carried on the SpaceX Falcon 9, Cygnus NG20 resupply rocket, which delivered an updated HPE Spaceborne Computer-2, based on EdgeLine and ProLiant servers. This provides edge computing and AI capabilities on the ISS including real-time image processing, deep learning, and scientific simulations. Kioxia provided 8x 1 TB XG NVMe SSDs, 4 x 960 GB SAS and 4 x 30.72 TB enterprise SAS drives for a total of 134.72 TB. This is the most data storage to travel to the space station on a single mission. SSD health will be monitored daily throughout the mission, with daily log files transmitted from the ISS to be tracked and analyzed by Kioxia in order to better understand how flash memory storage operates in space.

Kioxia storage is going to the ISS

The Spaceborne Computer-2 enables data to be evaluated in low Earth orbit in near-real time, making it possible to achieve a 30,000x reduction in download size by only transmitting the data output, or insight, to Earth instead of the raw data, thereby drastically reducing download times.

…

The UK arm of distributor TD SYNNEX has added Lenovo TruScale pay-as-you-go infrastructure to its portfolio, giving partners the ability to provide customers a cloud-like experience along with the reassurance of having systems deployed on premises. TruScale provides hybrid and multi-cloud environments, virtualization, hosted desktop, scalable storage, HPC, and other technologies.

…

The Memory Fabric Forum is a MemVerge initiative designed to accelerate CXL education, solution development, and co-marketing. It is running a Q1 Memory Fabric Forum Webinar CXL for the Enterprise on February 8. Here’s the Zoom link to register to attend.

Storage convention agenda

…

Quantum announced that Australia’s Amidata has implemented Quantum ActiveScale object storage as the foundation for its new Amidata Secure Cloud Storage Service for active and cold data. Amidata has already built Backup-as-a-Service and File Sharing Service offerings on Quantum’s DXi and StorNext products.

…

Quantum announced that the Listing Qualifications Department of the Nasdaq stock market has approved its plan to regain compliance and Quantum has been granted an extension to file its Form 10-Q for the second fiscal quarter on or before May 7.

…

Cloud-based search and analytics supplier Rockset announced a new instance class, resulting in 30 percent reduction in compute costs. The class is general purpose with different memory to CPU ratios optimized for low-cost search and AI applications. It has a lower entry price to enable developers to start building real-time analytics and AI-powered search applications starting at $232 per month. There are autoscaling compute capabilities to scale compute based on the workload. Rockset has had a strategic investment from Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, the venture capital program of HPE.

…

Scale Computing has launched a  VMware Rip & Replace Promotion for partners transitioning their business from VMware in the wake of Broadcom’s acquisition. Partners bringing customers looking to migrate from VMware to Scale Computing Platform (SC//Platform) will receive a 25 percent discount on Scale Computing software and services, as well as free migration tool access, complimentary Scale Computing Advanced Training Certification, and a free registration pass to the Scale Computing customer and partner event, Platform 2024.

…

SIOS Technology, which supplies application high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR), promoted Sajid Shaikh to Vice President of Engineering, reporting directly to COO Masahiro Arai. Previously, Sajid served as SIOS’s Director of Engineering.

…

SoftIron has added facilities to its private, on-premises HyperCloud, with new nodes that allow customers to tackle tougher workloads:

  • 64-core/128-thread AMD EPYC compute nodes
  • Nvidia-based GPU intelligence nodes
  • Socionext-based ASIC intelligence nodes

Three new storage nodes:

  • Density (HDD) Storage 48 TB, 72 TB, 120 TB, 144 TB, 216 TB & 240 TB
  • Performance (SSD) Storage 56 TB & 112 TB
  • Performance+ (NVMe) Storage 26 TB & 52 TB

Three new interconnect nodes:

  • 1 GbE management interconnects
  • 25 GbE high-speed interconnects
  • 100 GbE spline interconnects

…

Veeam has launched a Cyber Secure Program combining Veeam data protection software with a team of experts to help enterprises prepare for, protect against, and recover from ransomware. It starts with pre-incident support including architecture planning, implementation assistance, and quarterly security assessments. When there is an attack, customers are connected with Veeam’s dedicated Ransomware Response Team and the program offers post-incident support to enable rapid recovery. There are three main components:

  1. Design and implementation assistance to ensure Veeam best practices in implementing Veeam solutions to the highest security standards. Customers receive advanced seven-phase onboarding support and rigorous quarterly security assessments. 
  2. The Veeam Ransomware SWAT team (ransomware recovery “black belts”) is available 24/7 when a ransomware attack or cyber incident occurs. There are prioritized 30-minute SLAs and customers have a dedicated Support Account Manager (SAM) for assistance and escalation, plus access to specialized senior support engineers. 
  3. The Veeam Ransomware Recovery Warranty – up to $5 million in data recovery expense reimbursement for a verified attack.

…

Commvault achieves record Q3 but forecasts sequential downturn

By
Chris Mellor
-

Commvault earned $216.8 million in its third fiscal quarter ended December 31, a record amount for the biz, yet a quarter-on-quarter downturn has been forecast.

Revenues for the data protector were $216.8 million – up 11 percent year-on-year driven by a 31 percent increase in subscription revenue. There was a $17.1 million profit – a world away from the year-ago $310,000 loss, and representing 7.9 percent of revenues.

CEO and president Sanjay Mirchandani noted in prepared remarks: “Our Q3 results exceeded expectations, including  double-digit year-over-year growth across our most important KPIs. By our own metrics, this was an exceptional quarter. We also set the stage for the future, by introducing market-leading innovation with Commvault Cloud, our revolutionary platform for cyber resilience.”

Commvault revenues

He added: “We’re two months away from closing our fiscal year, and I couldn’t be more excited about our momentum as we approach FY 25.” 

Wells Fargo analyst Aaron Rakers observed that Commvault “sees an ‘amazing opportunity to accelerate growth’ in FY 2025.”

Financial summary

  • Operating cash flow: $44.4 million
  • Free cash flow: $42.6 million
  • Gross Margin: 82.9 percent up 0.1 percent on the year
  • Cash and cash equivalents: $284.3 million and no debt
  • Total ARR grew 17 percent year on year to $752 million
  • Subscription ARR grew 29 percent year on year to $571 million
  • SaaS ARR increased 77 percent year on year to $152 million

CFO Gary Merrill declared in the earnings call: “Our execution was strong as large software deal close rates improved sequentially and we delivered against our largest term subscription renewal quarter of the fiscal year.”

Commvault introduced Commvault Cloud powered by Metallic AI in November to unify all its SaaS and software offerings on one platform, with single pane of glass management, threat prediction and recovery features, and an Arlie – short for “Autonomous Resilience” – generative AI copilot using Azure OpenAI. 

Mirchandani claimed this was “the most important pivot in our 27-year history,” and Commvault reckons it now has a strong SaaS offering in a dynamic growth market. Subscription revenues were $114 million in the quarter – up 31 percent year on year. It added 500 new subscription customers in the quarter, taking its customer count total to 8,800.

The outlook for the fourth quarter is for revenues of $212 million give or take $2 million – growth of just 4.2 percent at the midpoint and a sequential decline on the latest quarter. The reasons for this anticipated slowdown in growth are not immediately clear. It doesn’t appear to be seasonal as there has been a third-to-fourth quarter revenue increase in six of the last eight financial years.

Merrill discussed the outlook: “For fiscal Q4, we expect subscription revenue, which includes both the software portion of term-based licenses and SaaS, to be $111 to $115 million. This represents 20 percent year-over-year growth at the midpoint. This Q4 subscription revenue outlook reflects continued momentum in our new customer and expansion business, but a smaller renewal pull in fiscal Q4 relative to Q3.” 

William Blair analyst Jason Ader told subscribers: “Revenue guidance for the fourth fiscal quarter was above consensus by $1.8 million at the midpoint (up 4.2 percent year-over-year). Though the renewals base is sequentially lower in the fourth quarter, subscription revenue was guided above consensus by $5.8 million at the midpoint (up 20 percent year-over-year), driven by strong SaaS momentum and an improving pipeline.” He mentioned that “fiscal Q3 had the largest renewal pool we’ve ever had in our history.”

In other words, the annual comparison is more important than the sequential comparison and it’s the lower renewals number that drags the outlook down.

The full 2024 outlook is for revenues of $828 million up or down $2 million – a 5.5 percent increase at the midpoint on fiscal 2023. There was no outlook for fiscal 2025, but Merrill opined: “We have an amazing opportunity to accelerate as we move forward. Obviously we have not given guidance for FY 2025 yet. Clearly our expectation [is] that FY 2025 growth will be higher than FY 2024.” 

Samsung gives the 280-layer 3D NAND game away

By
Chris Mellor
-

Samsung revealed it is planning 280-layer QLC 3D NAND SSDs via an International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) agenda.

The ISSCC conference will be held in San Francisco and a February 20 session presented by Samsung staff is entitled “A 280-Layer 1Tb 4b/cell 3D-NAND Flash Memory with a 28.5Gb/mm² Area Density and a 3.2GB/s High-Speed ​​IO Rate.” 

Samsung ISSCC 2024 agenda item
ISSCC 2024 agenda item

As reported by Germany’s ComputerBase, Samsung’s new V-NAND gen 9 flash has 280 layers, not the 300 previously associated with this generation. It’s a QLC (4bits/cell) technology and has, Samsung claims, industry-leading density of 28.5 gigabits per square millimeter as well as a fast IO rate for QLC flash.

UFS fingernail cards and M.2 gumstick cards will benefit from the higher density of these flash chips, given their limited physical space. YMTC has a 1 Tb QLC chip with a density of 20.62 Gb/mm² at 232 layers, while Micron’s density is 19.6 Gb/mm² using 232 layers, and WD/Kioxia is at the 13.86 Gb/mm² level with 162 layers. SK hynix has a 512 Gbit QLC chip with a 14.40 Gbit/mm² density at 176 layers.

Increasing the layer count is the key to increasing a chip’s density in Gb/mm² terms. At 280 layers, Samsung has the highest layer count flash, with SK hynix next at 238 layers, YMTC and Micron with 232, followed by WD and Kioxia with 218. SK hynix says it has a 321-layer chip coming next year. That could well give it a density edge until the other suppliers catch up.

Samsung chart.

A Tom’s Hardware report suggests that this Samsung flash could even enable 16 TB M.2 SSDs. That seems fanciful as current M.2 drives top out at the 2-4 TB level e.g. Sk hynix Platinum P41 at 2 TB, Seagate FireCuda 530 at 2 TB, Samsung 990 Pro at 4TB, and Micron 7400 Max M.2 at 3.2 TB. A jump to 8 TB might be feasible but 16 TB seems like a stretch too far.

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