The 20 Coolest Cloud Storage Companies Of The 2023 Cloud 100
These 20 cloud storage vendors are instrumental in letting customers know their data is accessible and protected no matter where it resides or how it moves.
The cloud storage industry every couple of years seems to reinvent itself. The last few years saw a focus on developing better ways to tie legacy on-premises storage with storage in hybrid and public multi-cloud infrastructures. And now the emphasis is on protecting cloud-based data, not only from hurricanes and power disruptions, but primarily from cybersecurity attacks, especially ransomware.
Cybersecurity has become a major concern of businesses that have implemented perimeter protection to keep out attacks. Cloud storage vendors, on the other hand, are increasingly tackling the issue of what happens when an attack inevitably gets through and either deletes or modifies the data or attaches new attacks to the data that can be sprung if it is recovered. They are responding with technologies such as air gapping, which is a way to keep data detached from the rest of the IT infrastructure so that it cannot be seen or touched by an application; immutability, which ensures that data cannot be deleted or modified without proper authorization; and new ways of authorizing specific users to access data.
As part of CRN’s 2023 Cloud 100, these 20 cloud storage vendors have come up with innovative ways to not only store data but keep it safe.
Arcserve
Brannon Lacey
CEO
Arcserve has been protecting data for decades with its software and hardware appliances and Backup and Disaster Recovery as a Service. The company provides cloud-based data protection that scales and offers multitenant capabilities, defending against cyberattacks with threat prevention, detection and ransomware recovery.
AvePoint
Tianyi “TJ” Jiang
Co-Founder, CEO
AvePoint offers SaaS technologies to migrate, manage and protect data in Microsoft 365 and counts over 9 million cloud users. AvePoint’s SaaS technologies are also available via MSPs who use it to support and manage their SMB customers. Its multitenant capabilities are available from distributors in over 100 cloud marketplaces.
Axcient
Rod Mathews
President, CEO
Axcient provides a suite of business availability technologies specifically for MSPs. They use x360Recover for backup and disaster recovery, x360Cloud for Microsoft application data protection and x360Sync for anti-ransomware protection to help customers protect their data in business and remote work scenarios.
Backblaze
Gleb Budman
Co-Founder, CEO
Backblaze develops the B2 cloud, which it uses to provide an alternative to AWS for pay-as-you-go storage as a service supporting app development, ransomware protection and data backups. The company also provides automatic unlimited backup for laptops and desktops to businesses and individuals on a subscription basis.
Cloudian
Michael Tso
Co-Founder, CEO
Cloudian develops file and object storage technology for S3-compatible object storage systems. Its object-based platform, HyperStore, and its HyperFile object storage-based file system—which combines NAS features with scale-out performance—are available via solution providers and strategic vendor partners.
Cohesity
Sanjay Poonen
President, CEO
Cohesity started as a data protection technology developer but has since branched out to focus on the security and management of data, particularly on ways to protect cloud-based and on-premises data against ransomware. The company in 2022 brought in former VMware COO Poonen as president and CEO.
Commvault
Sanjay Mirchandani
President, CEO
Commvault has evolved from a data protection developer into a cloud-focused data protection and data transformation powerhouse via its software and hardware appliances. It has been increasingly active in protecting data from SaaS applications from companies like Microsoft and SAP with its Metallic Cloud Storage Service.
DataCore Software
Dave Zabrowski
CEO
DataCore is a pioneer in software-defined storage, with capabilities for turning any hardware into block, file and object storage systems. It has been moving quickly to become a leader in container-native storage since its late 2021 acquisition of MayaData and last year introduced enterprise-grade container storage.
Hammerspace
David Flynn
Co-Founder, CEO
Hammerspace’s technology connects global users with their data and applications across their existing data center infrastructures or AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud services. The latest version of its software includes improved scale-out performance to up to 16 clusters, improved metadata performance and an enhanced GUI
HYCU
Simon Taylor
Founder, CEO
The HYCU Protégé platform provides ex tens i b l e multi-cloud data protection and lets businesses move, protect and recover data in complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments with native data protection technology for every data source. It also provides one-click recovery, granular recovery objectives and application-consistent backups.
Komprise
Kumar Goswami
Co-Founder, CEO
Komprise develops technology for unstructured data management mobility. Its Komprise Intelligent Data Management offering lets businesses point the service at any file storage in the cloud or in a data center to get full analytics of the data and migrate it while keeping it in its native format.
MSP360
Brian Helwig
CEO
MSP360, formerly known as CloudBerry Lab, provides data protection and IT management technologies for MSPs and IT departments. The company’s MSP360 platform combines data protection for cloud and on-premises data with secure remote access software to support customers or employees along with the company’s own RMM tool.
Nasuni
Paul Flanagan
CEO
Nasuni is a pioneer developer of cloud-native file systems. The company’s UniFS lets businesses scale to any level to unify isolated silos of file storage at hundreds of locations around the world into a single cloud offering that replaces traditional on-premises primary and secondary file storage.
NetApp
George Kurian
CEO
NetApp is at the forefront in tying on-premises storage to the cloud in a seamless fashion and has in the past few years moved to bring all its technology to the cloud. This allows businesses to manage and migrate data between on-premises and cloud infrastructure in the same way.
Panzura
Jill Stelfox
Executive Chairwoman, CEO
Panzura’s Cloud FS Global File System consolidates data from multiple locations into a single authoritative data source that’s deduplicated, compressed and protected against ransomware. It dynamically coordinates where files are stored, what gets sent to the cloud, who has edit and access rights and how data is managed.
Pure Storage
Charles Giancarlo
Chairman, CEO
Pure Storage is a developer of all-flash storage arrays based on multiple technologies and has paired those arrays with cloud connectivity and the ability to offer storage as a service. This gives customers the agility and flexibility of public cloud storage with the security and performance of on-premises all-flash technology.
Rewind
Mike Potter
Co-Founder, CEO
Rewind helps businesses protect their SaaS and cloud data with the Rewind platform, which provides data backup, restore and copy management. The company’s technology protects data from leading SaaS applications and allows businesses to remain compliant with data security regulations.
Veeam Software
Anand Eswaran
CEO
Veeam’s platform protects virtual, physical and cloud-based data with native capabilities for Microsoft, Oracle, SAP HANA and Kubernetes applications as well as from SaaS applications including Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams and Salesforce. Data can be backed up and recovered from anywhere to anywhere in a cloud-native fashion.
Veritas
Greg Hughes
CEO
Veritas is a leader in multi-cloud data management, with over 80,000 customers using the company’s technology to protect, recover and ensure compliance of their data. Veritas‘ technology provides data protection and cyber resilience with support for more than 800 data sources, 100 operating systems, 1,400 storage targets and 60 clouds.
Wasabi
David Friend
Co-Founder, President, CEO
Wasabi’s Hot Cloud Storage provides cloud storage technology the company said costs one-fifth the price of competitive cloud storage offering with no egress fees, API call charges or additional hidden fees. Hot Cloud Storage is available direct to solution providers or as the back end to cloud storage from multiple data protection vendors.