12 Storage Software Start-Ups to Watch in 2019

Software continues to eat the world and storage follows same path with SDS solutions

• Cohesity: Clearly the new emerging leader in secondary storage with associated data management. The company continues to penetrate the market at a rapid pace and started to be seen as the new NetApp both in term of success but also in term of team. The second phase of the deal with HPE invites us to think about some future direction. Will Mohit be able to keep the control?
• Datera: The company has demonstrated strong market adoption confirming a leadership in Bblock SDS. With Guy Churchward as the new CEO, we anticipate a new phase of development for the company with more business opportunities conversion especially with the recent HPE partnership. The company validates the need of a comprehensive solution exposing a large set of data services to compete and replace established storage arrays offerings.
• Datrium: In the past, trying to play in a specific hyperconverged category, the arrival of Tim Page as new CEO before summer 2018 has marked a strategic move towards HCI and is seen now as one of the reference enterprise HCI player. The company grows fast, unveils new key features and now spans cloud supporting a hybrid approach.
• Exagrid: It is one of the rare pure players to continue to promote (hyperconverged) deduplication target backup appliance with real success and the revenue curve illustrates a clear adoption and alignment with market needs. Interestingly, it is still independent and we think 2019 will be even more positive for the Marlborough-based company.
• Hammerspace: Leveraging all the expertise and software development made at Primary Data, the company immediately started a few months ago with a strong offering in unstructured data management. The new adventure led by David Flynn will have to transform every business opportunity and investigate potentially some OEMs.
• Minio: Definitely the leader in object storage, number of worldwide deployments, the community size, the number of uses cases and integration. The model chosen by the team has already demonstrated its values and we expect an more market penetration as Minio is the object storage reference today.
• Portworx: Container is hot, nothing new here and the firm had identified since the beginning one of the drawback of that approach: the volatility of its storage. The company is one of the companies providing one of the most advanced persistent storage approach for container. Definitely a market segment to follow in 2019.
• Qumulo: File storage leader for several years started with a clear mission, the company has extended its coverage both in term of products and use cases demonstrating if needed its technology leadership and product values. 2019 should be an acceleration year boosted by new people and product releases.
• Rubrik: Member of the small closed club of the new data protection players, the firm is seen as the model of this generation. With impressive financial rounds, market successes and large deals signed, the company is one the new gems of the industry just started 5 years ago. As 2018, we anticipate some acquisitions to build a strong product portfolio effect.
• Veeam: No doubt, Veeam is a rock star of the data protection landscape and we can even say that Veeam is the new Veritas even if some differences exist between them especially with product line around file system, volume management and cluster not present on the Veeam catalog. The company was the dream of Arcserve or Backup Exec teams. It represents a new generation of data protection that grows with server virtualization even if Rubrik took clearly and very rapidly market share from them. With $500 million recently received, Veeam will investigate M&A to stay in the leading zone.
• Vexata: Innovative player with new architecture and proven performance numbers, the firm has incrementally built a team, product and channel recognized today as one of the fastest and richest NVMe array on the market. The recent Fujitsu deal in North America is an interesting sign of recognition.
• WekaIO: Second player in the file storage category here, it targets demanding environments and projects that require high I/O performance. Recent company, its team has started with limited vertical usages and extended its market footprint as the solution started to be seen as a good alternative to ‘classic’ approaches for several use cases.