ClearSky Data
today announced the launch of its global storage network, a
breakthrough service that simplifies the entire enterprise data
lifecycle as a fully managed service. The ClearSky service combines the
performance and availability of local enterprise storage with the
scalability, agility and economics of the cloud, liberating overburdened
IT teams from managing primary, backup and disaster recovery storage
infrastructure. ClearSky delivers data where it's needed,
enterprise-ready and fully optimized to eliminate the cost and data
center footprint of traditional storage solutions.
IT
leaders often cite storage management as one of their biggest
challenges. Beyond the expense and difficulty of categorizing and
managing performance and availability throughout the data lifecycle, IT
has to respond quickly to changes in how applications are run - in data
centers, colocation facilities, or in private or public clouds - and
they typically have small teams with which to do it. The ClearSky
service dramatically simplifies that challenge with the ability to plug
into storage infrastructure as a fully managed service from points of
presence (PoPs) in major metro areas. The resulting service-level
agreement (SLA)-based service delivers hundreds of thousands of
input/output operations per second (IOPs) and less than two milliseconds
of latency, providing the performance of a local storage array with the
comprehensive security, low latency and high availability required for
enterprise applications.
"Simplifying
storage management is a critical objective for IT teams worldwide, and
we are excited to add ClearSky's managed service to our growing storage
ecosystem," said Charles Fan, senior vice president and general manager,
Storage Business Unit, VMware. "For customers looking to leverage the
latest VMware software-defined storage solutions, such as VMware
vSphere® Virtual VolumesTM, services like ClearSky's offer on-demand
access to data with greater efficiency and ease of use."
"Before
we started using the ClearSky service, we had required up to 48 hours
of downtime to migrate customer workloads," said Tim Vogel, chief
technology officer of Xtium, a cloud services company with multiple data
centers across the U.S. "With ClearSky, our migration time has shrunk
to 15 minutes, and we're saving our customers an average of 60 to 70
percent to deliver our service, as compared to using traditional
physical storage arrays."
The
ClearSky service enables workload portability and mobility between
traditional and cloud environments, eliminating the need for storage
infrastructure in multiple sites and freeing storage administrators from
endless infrastructure management activities, so they can focus on new
initiatives and growth. Users can quickly tap into unlimited amounts of
storage when and where they need it, without the capital costs, delays
and complexity IT has struggled with for decades.
"ClearSky
Data simplifies our development lifecycle and adds agility to our
storage processes," said Ernesto DiGiambattista, chief technology
officer of Sentinel Benefits & Financial Group. "It changes storage
from a daily task to a hands-free service offering."
ClearSky
Data's patent-pending Smart Tiered CachingTM technology automatically
distributes data across a network of geographically distributed cache
layers with built-in redundancy in order to provide optimal performance
based on evolving usage requirements and customer policies:
- Hot data: cached at the edge next to customer applications
- Warm data: cached in a ClearSky PoP within 120 miles of the customer
- All data: protected with multiple copies in the ClearSky Backing Cloud
The
ClearSky service, which leverages VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes as a
key component, allows users to set storage policies, provision and add
capacity on-demand, and access system alerts and updates 24/7/365. The
offering also eliminates latency by using dedicated, redundant private
networks and optimization techniques that minimize network traffic. The
end-to-end service is easily accessed from anywhere by customers through
a Web-based portal and integrates into existing management
infrastructure. Users add capacity as they grow, paying only for what
they actually need.
"ClearSky
is the first company to truly live up to the storage service provider
dream - offering true primary, transactional-level storage services with
all the benefits of cloud economics and management," said Steve
Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.
"It's been a long time coming."
"Enterprise
IT is ready to break free from managing storage infrastructure and
embrace new levels of agility," said Ellen Rubin, CEO and co-founder of
ClearSky Data. "Our global storage network will forever change the way
IT thinks about storage, so businesses can reduce data center
footprints, save money and access their data on-demand for applications
running on-premise and in the cloud."
ClearSky
Data will premiere the company and exhibit its service at VMworld 2015
in San Francisco. Visit the team in booth #441 to receive a demo.