Pivot3 To Unveil Hyper-converged Infrastructure Solution For SMB, ROBO Clients

Hyper-converged infrastructure technology developer Pivot3 this week will unveil the availability of Edge Office, an all-flash storage solution targeting small- and medium-sized business (SMB) customers and remote and branch offices (ROBO).

Edge Office is aimed at taking the cost sting out of implementing hyper-converged infrastructure solutions, said Ron Nash, CEO of the Austin, Texas-based vendor.

Most hyper-converged infrastructure solutions feature 2U appliances with up to a dozen hard drive slots, Nash told CRN. However, the cost for such a solution, including the minimum of three nodes needed to protect against failure, is high. "Three 2U appliances, that's a pretty hefty configuration to start," he said.

[Related: 23 Powerful Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Products]

Pivot3's Edge Office features the same software as the company's standard appliances, but is based on low-cost 1U servers with five drive slots, Nash said. Each node combines compute, networking, and between 1.6 TBs and 6.4 TBs of raw flash storage, and can be clustered to over 38 TBs of raw capacity shared by all the applications on the cluster.

"With three nodes, you get the same resilience as three 2U appliances," he said. "Customers can scale their solution, but it wouldn't make sense to deploy a rack of 1U appliances. But for smaller offices, three to five 1U units is enough."

Three fully-configured 1U Edge Office appliances will have a total street price of between $40,000 and $90,000, depending on the flash drives used, Nash said. The company also offers a hard drive-based solution targeting the video surveillance market he said.

"Edge Office is for data bases and transaction processing," he said.

Hyper-converged infrastructure has become a big topic of discussions among customers, and having a company like Pivot3 focus on smaller offices is important, said Joshua Lande, senior account manager a Maureen Data Systems, a New York-based solution provider and Pivot3 channel partner.

"In branch office environments, tech talent is limited," Lande told CRN. "You can't get people there quickly. And hyper-converged infrastructure brings compute, storage, and networking resources together. If you deploy a traditional SAN, you would need two or three different skillsets to set up a remote office."

Pivot3 offers good solutions for smaller customers and offices, Lande said.

It is also a good solution that matches the Maureen Data System's large installed based of NexGen clients, Lande said. Pivot3 early this year acquired NexGen, a developer of storage quality of service (QoS) technology.

"For us, the Pivot3 solution is not revolutionary," he said. "But it's a real nice, new solution I haven't seen from any other vendor.

Pivot3 sells its solutions exclusively through channel partners, except for one or two direct customers, Nash said.

The company is doing well financially; it has enough funding to see it through to profitability, he said. "We're managing the business much more conservatively than competitors who are publicly listed," he said.

Last month's successful IPO of San Jose, Calif.-based Nutanix, a leader in the hyper-converged infrastructure market, was good news to Nash.

"Congrats to them," he said. "I would love to have a comparable opening. The IPO certainly helps bring awareness to the industry."

Even so, Nash said, his company is in no rush to its own IPO. "We're well-funded," he said. "There's no need to rush to an IPO just to sustain our growth. We can pick and choose our own time."