Avere Systems has announced that the Ames Research Center, part of NASA, has selected the Avere FXT Series Edge Filers and flash offering to consolidate its existing storage and move data to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud. The deal is good news for Avere especially with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) beginning its push around Eucalyptus, the AWS-like private cloud it purchased last year.
One of the major challenges for companies looking to move data in and out of private cloud is performance and security. What Avere is offering NASA is the ability to create a hybrid storage environment that covers both AWS and its existing data storage at the Ames Research Center.
While Avere has been garnering industry benchmarks for moving data in and out of AWS, this deal will be watched carefully as the size of data sets will exceed those of many very large enterprises. A successful implementation by Avere will do more to attract new business than any number of benchmarks as it will demonstrate a practical capability rather than the more esoteric usage that benchmarks highlight.
The products chosen include the Avere FXT Edge Filers, Avere FlashMove and Avere Flashcloud. This use of flash storage is important as the data will be moved in real time. Avere will identify the “hot” data and keep that on the flash drives while other data is moved to and from AWS in the background. Like most government departments, the Ames Research Center tested a number of products before deciding on Avere. At the moment neither party is saying who else was considered and it will be interesting to see if that information makes its way into the public domain.
According to Ron Bianchini, president and CEO at Avere Systems: “The stakes are high when it comes to the transferring data to and securing it in the cloud – Avere makes moving legacy storage to AWS very straightforward and safeguarded. With Avere, the researchers at Ames Research Center didn’t encounter downtime during their transition and were able to maintain the best possible performance when it comes to accessing their data while keeping the data protected.”
Is Avere gearing up to compete with HPE?
Having announced that it is no longer going to compete in the public cloud space, HPE spent the end of 2015 doing deals with Microsoft Azure and AWS. The plan is for HPE to offer private cloud services to its customers as well as making connection to public cloud seamless. The ultimate goal here is not about customer connectivity but replacing all that old on-premises kit with brand new shiny HPE hardware.
Part of the HPE strategy revolves around the acquisition of Eucalyptus, a private cloud AWS-compatible product which it renamed HPE Helion Eucalyptus. Among the cloud services Eucalyptus supports is Amazon S3 and it will be interesting to see how HPE and Avere compete against each other. There is clearly a big market for the ability to move data in and out of AWS and with data sovereignty a key issue in Europe, companies are beginning to take notice of storage solutions that support hybrid cloud.
Conclusion
Over the last year Avere has talked about its ability to scale-up to deal with very large data. It will be interesting to see how it copes with the size of data sets that Ames Research Center wants to move around. Potential large enterprise customers will want to see if the Avere FXT Series Edge Filers meet or even exceed their design specs. If they do, it is likely that Avere will be able to put significant pressure on the like of HPE when it comes to supporting data and hybrid cloud.
