Scality Unveils First Hardware Appliance, Two-Tier Distribution Program

Scality, which develops AWS S3-compatible object storage technology, is known primarily for its software-defined storage capabilities, but it is now rolling out its first hardware appliance to meet the needs of customers looking for turnkey systems.

Object storage software developer Scality Wednesday introduced its first hardware appliance in a move it said will meet the needs of channel partners and customers for a turnkey appliance to store and protect data in Veeam Software environments.

Along with the launch, Scality unveiled its first two-tier distribution program, with Reston, Va.-based Carahsoft as its first named distributor.

Scality’s launch of its turnkey object storage appliance comes just a week after the company unveiled the promotion of Eric LeBlanc as the company’s new vice president of worldwide channel sales and general manager for its Artesca business.

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Scality offers software-defined storage technology that can turn servers from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco Systems and Supermicro into object storage appliances, as well as virtual versions of its appliances for VMware environments, said Wally MacDermid, vice president of strategic alliances for the San Francisco-based company.

However, MacDermid told CRN, the demand for turnkey appliances using Scality’s Amazon Web Services S3-compatible object storage software pushed the company to bring the appliance to market.

“So in addition to a software appliance and a VMware version of our Artesca product, which is our channel-friendly, high-volume object storage software, we have been asked by customers and channel partners to have a pre-installed hardware appliance available as well,” he said. “And so that’s why we are unveiling the third option for people who want to buy Artesca.”

Prior to launching its own Artesca-branded object storage appliances, Scality partnered with HPE, Cisco and Supermicro to provide the software that could be loaded on those vendors’ servers for sale through their channels to businesses looking for a bundled appliance, MacDermid said.

“But many people like the ease of use of a turnkey appliance,” he said. “They get something at their facility, plug in a couple of cables and have it be up and running in minutes,” he said. “We’re working with a third-party integrator, Arrow Intelligent Solutions. They do the same thing for a number of other vendors who are in our space.”

Those appliances are built by Arrow Intelligent Solutions in the U.S. and Europe and brought to the channel via multiple IT distributors including Carahsoft, MacDermid said.

The new Artesca appliances are currently available only for data environments managed and protected by software from Columbus, Ohio-based Veeam Software, he said.

“So it’s going to have a ransomware protection message because ransomware is more and more prevalent,” he said. “In organizations of all sizes, people need a ransomware protection solution. With the cloud, you can use Veeam and Commvault and all these other backup apps, and you can send your data up to the cloud. But if you need to restore quickly in the event of a ransomware attack, you need a local device. That’s really what’s driving a lot of the Artesca story.”

Scality’s focus on Veeam environments stems from that company’s focus on ransomware, particularly with the release of Veeam 12, MacDermid said.

“With Veeam 12, which Veeam released earlier this year, they now have the performance primary tier and the capacity tier,” he said. “Before this year, the performance tier did not support object storage. Veeam is one of the first third-party applications to elevate object storage to be a ‘first-class citizen.’ And that creates a huge opportunity for Scality and other object storage vendors. I mean, Veeam [says it has] 450,000 customers. That’s a lot of customers focused on ransomware protection and looking for a single vendor to provide all of their storage layers.”

For businesses with large object storage requirements, the Scality Artesca software-defined storage version and the virtual VMware appliance both scale as far as the underlying hardware allows, MacDermid said. The new Artesca purpose-built appliances, however, come in only three fixed capacities and are available in one-node and three-node versions, so scalability is limited, he said.

Scality in the future may introduce turnkey appliances for non-Veeam environments, MacDermid said.

The new Scality Artesca turnkey object storage appliances are available only via channel partners, who can order them through Carahsoft or other distributors to be named, he said.

It is great to see improved customer choice for Scality’s object storage technology, said Daniel Alonso, technologist at Flagler, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based solution provider and MSP and partner of Scality and Veeam.

“There are customers looking for all-in-one appliances, turnkey offerings with the software already built-in,” Alonso told CRN. “Scality is focused on software-defined storage but is empowering customers with multiple choices.”

While Scality’s object storage can scale as high as customers need, subject to the limitation of the hardware on which it is installed, the appliances and their smaller capacities still meet the needs of customers, Alonso said.

Scality has proven itself in a wide range of customer use cases, he said.

“Object storage is important for storing files and metadata so that modern aps can use it to query data without the clumsiness of traditional file systems,” he said. “And it’s secure, immutable storage. It gives customers a much better TCO and faster return on investment compared to renting capacity forever from Amazon.”