This week, European journalists have been invited toSan Francisco to meet with some of the most exciting and innovative companies currently operating in Silicon Valley, San Francisco and further afield.
Catalogic Software, Micron Technology and Basho Technologies met with the press tour group on its penultimate day, briefing us on copy data management, storage and more. Here are the highlights from day three:
Catalogic Software
Providing users with a software-defined copy data management solution that the company claims will be "the next leap in data management," Catalogic was founded in 1996 and is based in New Jersey. Travelling to San Francisco especially to see the IT Press Tour, the company was keen to show off what they have to offer.
According to figures from IDC, more than 60 per cent of all storage capacity is consumed by copy data, and most of it sits idle, the analyst house said. What the Catalogic platform does, then, is improve the user's ability to better catalogue, manage and leverage that copy data.
Catalogic sell their product to enterprise customers directly, with this better manageability of copy data essential to the IT and business functions of these companies.
Copy data will be a $51b problem by 2018, more figures from IDC presented by the company indicate, and accounts for 85 per cent of storage hardware spending and 65 per cent of storage software spending.
Catalogic did admit, however, that more and more Silicon Valley start-ups attempting to tackle this problem have now begun to appear.
Using Catalogic, they say, will help clients to manage their infrastructure with an actionable catalogue of copy data, with automation allowing them to more successfully orchestrate the use of data copies. Use cases for this include automated disaster recovery and automated test and development.
Micron Technology
Following the day's first session, we travelled to Micron's headquarters to speak with VP of storage solutions Darren Thomas. In their session, Thomas, VP of storage marketing Eric Endebrock and others demonstrated what the company is currently doing within the storage sector.
This is a relatively new, enterprise-focused part of the company, they told us, working with customers in mind rather than developers. This will lead to a "revolution" in the way Micron thinks of the customer, Thomas added, looking at large businesses such as RBS and the US Post Office, rather than enterprise tech companies like Dell.
This moves Micron's model towards a new perspective, with many end users only just discovering the capabilities flash storage solutions might have for them and their business.
Flash is "data in motion", they tell the group, and overthrows the 60-year-old idea of storage as a place in which you store data-at-rest with accuracy and reliability the biggest concerns for customers. Now, users are finding ways to use data to make business decisions, and security and manageability will be the core issues for companies to solve.
In terms of software, Micron are expanding to a software design centre in Austin, Texas, and a team of the world's "foremost flash experts and storage visionaries" will work to "accelerate the storage revolution."
Basho Technologies
Lastly, the group was treated to a presentation from Basho Technologies, with CTO Dave McCroy and VP of product marketing Peter Coppola showing off Basho's Data Platform. Basho has around 120 employees worldwide, with offices in Washington DC, Tokyo and London.
The company was founded in 2008, and developed distributed database Riak in 2011 before becoming a fully-fledged database company. Basho Data Platform was born in May 2015, making it the youngest product shown over the course of the week. Currently, it has over 200 enterprise clients, consisting of over a third of the Fortune 50.
The thinking behind the data platform is to provide companies with the same level of internal database as those built by high profile companies such as Google, Amazon, LinkedIn and Facebook. Those companies without the budget and resources to create their own data platform, then, are able to enjoy the same benefits by using Basho.
With Big Data and the effect on data management from IoT becoming increasing concerns for pretty much every business, Bashoo aims to help companies by enabling the operational simplicity, availability and scalability of these applications across public, private and hybrid cloud environments.
Customers using Basho Data Platform include Comcast and Cisco, for Xfinity video menu systems and malware protection service, respectively.
Friday's sessions will be with Jut, CoreOS and Avere Systems.
