Zadara Storage, the provider of enterprise-class Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS), today announced that Kodak Alaris, a spin-off from the Eastman Kodak Company addressing both the B2C and B2B markets, has selected the Zadara VPSA storage array to implement an agile, highly available cloud-based storage-as-a-service model. The Zadara solution allows Kodak Alaris to easily adapt to changing seasonal storage capacity needs, simplify storage management and reduce overall expenditures.

The imaging business has specific demands, including a high degree of seasonality, primarily during holidays, fast processing times, high availability and unforeseeable changes in order volume. These factors drive the need for elastic scalability, both upward and downward, 24/7 availability and an OpEx pay-as-you-go model. In terms of security, an encryption option is vital as photos are highly confidential and personal assets. All these factors led Kodak Alaris to look for a new storage solution that was able to fulfill these requirements.

Kodak Alaris chose Zadara Storage after testing a wide range of on-premises solutions as well as other cloud services such as Microsoft Azure. They evaluated solutions based on their ability to react quickly and flexibly to changing needs, simplify management, reduce overall expenditures, adhere to security and compliance regulations, and to implement a common technology platform. Additional criteria were fast implementation, a simple path of data migration, and compatibility with existing cloud partners.

The Kodak Alaris decision makers were impressed with Zadara's innovative technology, flexible billing and payment model, and easy connectivity and integration with Kodak Alaris' preferred cloud solutions - meaning investment protection and ease-of-use. Zadara's worldwide support and service were also critical to the decision. Kodak Alaris stores and protects image files and personal customer data. Therefore, Zadara's at-rest and in-flight encryption capabilities, as well as the fact that Kodak Alaris owns the encryption keys, were very important to the team.

Hans-Martin Otto, WW operations manager KDFS, Kodak Alaris, said, "Zadara allows us to adapt quickly and flexibly to changing needs. We are also impressed by the solution's performance, high availability and low administrative overhead. In addition, we are delighted with the fast and competent support and the transparent billing. We are currently looking into extending the Zadara services to further locations and also deploying the solution in a disaster recovery scenario."

"Kodak Alaris was looking for a solution that could be easily adapted to changing demand and allow them to pay according to actual capacity usage per month - instead of being tied to inflexible fixed rates," said Dani Naor, vice president international sales at Zadara Storage. "We are delighted to be able to meet these needs with a solution that can scale up and down as requirements change."