CTERA is continuing its sharp growth trajectory from 2021 as organizations transition to the cloud while accelerating data management at the edge.
To find out more about the company’s momentum and everything that’s been going on, VMblog spoke with Liran Eshel, the CEO and co-founder of CTERA
VMblog: We see you’ve released CTERA’s momentum numbers. You’ve had a banner year. What sectors have been the strongest for you?
Liran Eshel: Yes, 2021 was a very successful year for CTERA. All sectors of our business grew despite working through the second year of the pandemic and all the pivoting that entailed.
One of the hottest sectors for us in the last year was the public sector. We have seen over 300% growth in US Federal and we are also involved in major government contracts in other countries worldwide. One of our most recent wins is with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where we’re taking a key part in a strategic infrastructure-as-a-managed service contract for storage and computing infrastructure facilities across the U.S. and globally.
VMblog: How has the CTERA roadmap changed over the past year?
Eshel: In the last year we took our global system to the far edge of the enterprise, with our new remote work suite that includes a new desktop agent and a small factor edge filer that can fit small city offices and remote workers. All connected to our global file system with our advanced caching, deduplication, and security.
VMblog: Tell us where you see the most vigorous market adoption of your solutions?
Eshel: In addition to the public sector we have also seen traction with our enterprise customers in the industrial, healthcare, financial, and media verticals. All of our customers face similar challenges of displacing legacy file servers with hybrid cloud storage. They need a data management system that can dynamically move or synchronize data from the edge – where the users are – up to the cloud. They want to do this the most cost efficient, secure, and simple way possible, while giving their end-users the same data access speeds as if they were sitting in a corporate data center.
VMblog: Ransomware has always been an issue, but threats have skyrocketed over the past year. What is CTERA’s response to the growing threat?
Eshel: Yes, we see how ransomware attacks have reached epidemic proportions. Cyber criminals stay one step ahead of the game and continue to target valuable data for high payouts. Our global file system helps eliminate the risk of data loss, supporting enterprises in their ability to recover their data by combining enterprise-grade data protection tools with file sync technology.
We are also strong advocates for zero-trust architectures with the key principle being that every access attempt to the network must be considered suspicious until proven otherwise.
We see the ransomware attacks continue to happen and evolve at the same time. Look at Log4shell. It remained undetected for almost a decade in a popular open-source library and then affected hundreds of millions of devices. Zero trust architectures are the answer for incidents like this, ensuring everyone verifies themselves before gaining access to sensitive information.
VMblog: Growth was a theme at CTERA over the course of 2021. What else was notable?
Eshel: We expanded our strategic partnerships; we were named HPE 2021 Edge-to-Cloud Partner of the Year and launched a new IBM Marketplace offering. We also announced a new partnership with Varonis to provide data classification, log processing, and auditing capabilities to defend sensitive data from theft and loss.
Donald Wales joined our executive leadership team as senior vice president of North America sales. He is an industry veteran who brings over thirty years of expertise from previous leadership roles he’s held at EMC, IBM, Zerto, and others. We’re happy to have him on board.
VMblog: You have two solutions that you’ve spotlighted over the past year. The CTERA HC100 and CTERA 7.0. Can we take a moment to recap these offerings and discuss their target markets?
Eshel: CTERA 7.0 introduced innovations that allow enterprises to dramatically simplify the cost, capacity, and scale problems that have plagued traditional NAS and file storage for decades. 7.0 won several awards in 2021 including leader and outperformer in the GigaOm Distributed Cloud File Storage Radar, Top 5 solution for enterprise NAS consolidation by DCIG, The Data Breakthrough Award for Storage Innovation of the Year, and a Gold Stevie Award in the American Business Awards.
The CTERA HC100 is our small form-factor edge filer for home offices and teleworkers. It sits on a desktop and delivers the full functionality of all other CTERA Edge Filer product lines despite being the size of a smartphone. The CTERA HC100 allows edge users to enjoy a PB-scale cloud environment with local performance; fast edge-to-cloud synchronization with source-based encryption and deduplication capabilities; and enterprise-grade hardware with global support.
VMblog: Was the CTERA HC100 a response to the pandemic?
Eshel: Yes, the CTERA HC100 was already in our roadmap, but with the Work from Home paradigm shift occurring in the early months of the pandemic, we accelerated its delivery to market.
VMblog: What does an ideal 2022 look like for CTERA?
Eshel: Data management is the bloodline of the modern data-driven enterprise, and by providing fast access to infinitely scalable storage at the edge we help pharma companies research new medicine, industrial companies design 3d models, and media companies edit 4k content.
It is extremely satisfying to see how our technology enables new levels of productivity for our customers. An ideal 2022 would be to see the continued acceleration of this trend, with more customers using CTERA to solve real life problems harnessing the power of the cloud at the edge.
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