Why Where To Store Your Data Isn’t As Simple As It Seems
October 23, 2014
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October 28, 2014
UPDATE: Nvidia acquired SwiftStack on March 5, 2020
There’s a meme going around the internet called “Too Afraid to Ask Andy” which plays on the popular character from NBC’s Parks and Rec, Andy Dwyer. Below is my “Too Afraid to Ask Andy:”
The reason for my ignorance is not because I’m unaware of startups, but I guess I just don’t know their origin or how they’re able to make (raise?) a ridiculous amount of money, like SwiftStack for instance. They were able to raise $16 million in the Series B investment round (replace “how startups work” above with “what a Series B investment round is”) for their software-defined storage plan. They’re now up to an astounding $23.6 million in funding. But what is SwiftStack and what are they going to do?
What Is SwiftStack?
I wasn’t too afraid to ask this question because, well, that would make for a rather boring article, eh? I was able to determine, with the help of SwiftStack’s website, that it’s basically a storage controller allowing enterprises to achieve the same level of storage effectiveness as large scale web or public infrastructure clouds.
So basically they control nearly all aspects of the storage environment. Neat-o!
You may be asking yourself why you should care that they raised $16 million dollars. Because now they’re ready to distribute their open-sourced software to data centers, and if you just so happen to have your data stored in a data center—or you’re one of those enterprises looking for a storage solution—then maybe you can hop aboard the hype train a bit early.
Why Care about a Software-Defined Networking Controller?
Despite what we’ve warned about cloud infrastructure in the past, it seems that more and more companies are moving from self-contained storage environments to more cloud-like distributed environments (because it’s cheaper, not necessarily because it’s better).
And according to SwiftStack’s CEO Joe Arnold, SwiftStack will enable companies to control all their data at multiple data centers all across the world (potentially solving a problem we talked about last week). The controller also will enable the management of storage infrastructure and the performance of software upgrades among other useful activities as well.
Obviously, there’s great potential in these types of software and OpenStack-related companies seem to be the prize-hogs of the startup-investing crowd. It just goes to show that the little guys with great ideas can be funded by former little guys with big ideas with little big-business intervention. Because (I assume) that’s the point of a startup company (I broke down and watched a few episodes of Shark Tank about three paragraphs ago, so I’m confident I now know how they work….).
But never forget that there’s really no substitution for a nice, dedicated server. But the ability to potentially link a bunch of your dedicated servers across the world would certainly be company-changing technology. And when it all boils down, the point of every thing is to make money, right? SwiftStack aims to make making money easier by making data storage easier. And I don’t know about you, but I’m rather impatient in this digital age. I’m ready for SwiftStack.
