I caught up with Suzy Visvanathan, back in May when the company announced Coho DataStream 2.7, and now it is releasing its latest version, Coho DataStream 2.8. I spoke with Sanjay Jagad about what Coho Data has been up to since that time, as well as its newest Coho DataStream architecture.

VMblog:  To kick things off, what has Coho Data been up to since we last caught up with you?

Sanjay Jagad:  It's has been a busy few months for us since we last spoke. In addition to continuing to improve and add more key features to our Coho DataStream architecture, which we will share more about later, we have closed some great deals with customers to help them improve their end-user experience for their customers. For example, we recently worked with Tabush Group, a provider of virtual workspace, private cloud and managed IT services, to integrate their virtual desktop offering with our DataStream scale-out storage platform in Boxtop -- Tabush's all-in-one virtual workspace cloud IT solution. We also recently announced a customer integration with North American-based proprietary trading firm, DV Trading, who is using our high-performance rack-scale converged platform in their latest state-of-the-art trading infrastructure buildout to help them ensure high performance of their financial applications. Finally, just this month we also announced a customer deployment with ICS Corp., a direct mail and marketing technology services provider, who deployed our DataStream platform due to its easy to manage true scale-out capability, so they can more easily keep up with customer demand.

VMblog:  Can you give us an overview of your newest release, Coho DataStream 2.8, and what it offers?

Jagad:  Absolutely. Our newest Coho DataStream release, version 2.8, is helping to make the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) a reality by delivering the simplicity, elastic scale and economics of the public cloud to the enterprise private cloud. The latest architecture release incorporates features that address many of the key elements required by enterprises to set up their own private clouds.  We are very proud of this latest release, as it is the only solution now available that can natively run file and block storage and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) on the same platform with multi-tenancy, quality of service (QoS) and container support.

VMblog:  What problem does Coho DataStream 2.8 solve?

Jagad:  As today's information-centric applications accelerate data growth, inflexible legacy infrastructure now requires more capital and operational expense than the value these new applications create. To address these requirements/needs, our latest Coho DataStream 2.8 platform offers an integrated SDDC solution that uses the rack as its design paradigm, creating an entirely new foundational software stack that is better equipped to run, manage and optimize data center operations. Coho makes infrastructure invisible by abstracting and converging storage, network and compute at the rack level, thereby allowing for the right mix of resources for varied application demands and significantly reducing TCO. Our unique Software-Defined Networking (SDN) integration delivers true scale out storage performance, secure multi-tenancy, operational simplicity, and overall ease of management.

VMblog:  What are some of the key user benefits of Coho DataStream 2.8?

Jagad:  There are three key benefits of Coho DataStream 2.8 that our users can take advantage of when deploying our platform. First, our newest architecture allows our users to execute multiple workloads on the same platform in a simple way, which is a critical requirement for the SDDC. This new release expands Coho's portfolio with the addition of HDFS support. With this, DataStream now provides simple, native support of file, block and HDFS, allowing our customers to deploy and unify different workloads with different service level objectives on a single, scalable, high-performance platform.

Second, this newest release also allows end users to securely control multiple tenants on the same platform, while meeting tenant-specific service levels. Our SDN integration, coupled with this new QoS capability, offers network, storage and performance characteristics to be securely isolated, while meeting desired service levels. In consolidated storage environments, production workloads can now be protected against noisy neighbors.

And lastly, with our 2.8 release, we have expanded our container support beyond just Hadoop - to include adding QoS capabilities -- that isolate tenant workloads, which is a key requirement for offering BDaaS/CaaS in a private cloud environment. As a result, IT organizations can now help negate sprawl and streamline consolidation.

VMblog:  Where do you see the SDDC market headed in the coming months?

Jagad:  We anticipate that cloud computing will continue to evolve and advance, which will place new demands on enterprise data centers to keep up in areas such as ease of management, elastic scale, reduced TCO, and the elimination of data center sprawl. Keeping this in mind, we designed our Coho DataStream 2.8 architecture with the goal of providing our customers with many of the core components of a software-defined data center in a single platform that addresses their future, critical needs around consolidation, the rapid growth of data, economics, and operational simplicity. So we feel that we are well positioned for this next phase of growth in the market.

##

Once again, thank you to Sanjay Jagad, Sr. Manager, Product Marketing, Coho Data, for taking time out to speak with VMblog.com.