This week Chris and Martin review the idea of storage unicorns, companies that have a valuation of one billion dollars or more. What exactly is the basis or justification for a billion dollar price tag? Is this something invented by the VC industry or is there a real degree of science behind the assumptions? The list in question comes from a Blocks & Files article written by Chris Mellor, which in turn references the list produced by an analyst firm. While valuation based on some multiple of money invested does give some indication of value, …
S01E02 – Hybrid Cloud and Object Storage
Object storage is a solution for managing large volumes of unstructured data. In the public cloud solutions such as AWS S3 and Azure Blob store provide massive scalability at predictable prices. However, is the public cloud the right place to store all of our data? When costs, lock-in, compliance and other factors are taken into consideration, does it make sense to rent the cloud for compute and use an on-premises object store for our data? If we use this model, what are the challenges? In this episode, Chris talks with Neil Stobart, VP Global Systems …
#69 – IP EXPO 2018 – Cloudian, E8 Storage, StorCentric and Zerto
This is one of two podcasts, recorded live at IP EXPO 2018 in London. The format is slightly different from what we’ve done in the past, in that we have four short 10-minute interviews with storage vendors. Each talks about their company, products and industry problem being solved. The four guests are: Steve Blow, Technology Evangelist with Zerto Neil Stobart, VP Global Systems Engineering at Cloudian Julie Herd, Director of Technical Marketing at E8 Storage Read Fenner, VP Global Sales for Nexsan and Drobo & Mark Walker, Channel Sales Director (Nexsan) from StorCentric These interviews …
#64 – Success & Failure in Storage Startup Land
This week’s conversation follows up on Chris’ recent visit to Flash Memory Summit in the US. Chris and Martin discuss the storage startup landscape and the range of companies appearing at the event. What makes a company successful? Is IPO or acquisition the right route? The discussion starts with a simple, yet tricky question – why does storage continue to be such a diverse market place, with so many solutions to problems? We see a storage “pendulum” effect, with vendors moving between hardware and software. At the moment, there seems to be more focus on …