12 Notable Data Storage Startups to Watch in 2016

As data‑storage complexity continues to grow, a wave of startups surfaced in 2015, each employing flash, disk, and cloud technologies to enhance data mobility and management across storage tiers. Below are twelve storage‑focused startups worth watching in 2016.

ClearSky Data – Headquarters: Boston; CEO: Ellen Rubin; Flagship product: ClearSky Data Global Storage Network (launched Aug 2015). Category: cloud storage, primary storage capacity optimization, hierarchical storage. Core feature: integration and replication between data‑center and cloud storage, providing a caching layer for hot data and enabling backup migration to Amazon S3.

Cohesity – Headquarters: Santa Clara, CA; CEO: Mohit Aron; Flagship product: Cohesity Data Platform (launched Jun 2015). Category: backup, data recovery, data replication. Core feature: secondary‑storage consolidation on a single appliance with QoS‑driven resource arbitration, built on the OASIS OS and SnapFS distributed object file system.

Datrium Inc. – Headquarters: Sunnyvale, CA; CEO: Brian Biles; Flagship product: Datrium DVX Server Flash Storage System (launched Jul 2015). Category: VM backup, SSD caching, storage‑network virtualization. Core feature: flash‑based storage virtualization for VMware environments, supporting RAID, deduplication, and 48 TB‑scale NetShelf SAS back‑ends.

Formation Data Systems – Headquarters: Fremont, CA; CEO: Mark Lewis; Flagship product: FormationOne Dynamic Storage Platform (launched Sep 2015). Category: storage‑network virtualization, unified storage. Core feature: SaaS‑style big‑data delivery and object storage, abstracting x86, bare‑metal, and VM resources to provide block, file, and object services with cross‑tier SLAs.

Hedvig – Headquarters: Santa Clara, CA; CEO: Avinash Lakshman; Flagship product: Hedvig Distributed Storage Platform (launched Mar 2015). Category: cloud storage, data protection, deduplication, multi‑protocol/unified storage. Core feature: virtualization of large‑scale data‑base workloads across on‑prem and cloud tiers, supporting iSCSI, OpenStack Cinder, NFS, Swift, and Amazon S3.

Infinidat – Headquarters: Needham, MA; CEO: Moshe Yanai; Flagship products: InfiniBox F6000 & F2000 (launched Apr 2015). Category: network storage. Core feature: PB‑scale unified SAN arrays with asynchronous replication, delivering up to 2 PB raw capacity and high IOPS/throughput.

infinite io – Headquarters: Austin, TX; CEO: Mark Cree; Flagship product: NSC‑110 storage controller (launched Jun 2015). Category: NAS storage, NAS hardware, NAS management, hierarchical storage. Core feature: network‑based controller that offloads storage functions to the subsystem, using flash cache to accelerate NAS performance and tier data to cheaper storage or cloud.

Primary Data – Headquarters: Los Altos, CA; CEO: Lance Smith; Flagship product: DataSphere virtualization software (launched Aug 2015). Category: data archiving, backup, disaster recovery, file/NAS virtualization, virtual backup, hierarchical storage. Core feature: intelligent data placement and scalability, enabling dynamic migration between on‑prem and cloud storage.

Quobyte Inc. – Headquarters: Berlin, Germany; CEO: Kolbeck; Flagship product: Quobyte Software Storage System (launched Jul 2015). Category: HPC storage, hybrid‑cloud storage, multi‑protocol/unified storage. Core feature: proprietary Parallel File System (PFS) for high‑performance computing, supporting block, NFS, HDFS, Spark, S3, and OpenStack.

Reduxio Systems – Headquarters: San Bruno, CA; CEO: Mark Weiner; Flagship product: Reduxio HX550 (launched Sep 2015). Category: deduplication, data protection, disk arrays, SSD storage. Core feature: "BackDating" enables point‑in‑time data recovery, with unlimited snapshots and inline deduplication/compression.

Savage IO – Headquarters: Fairport, NY; CEO: Phil Roberts; Flagship product: SavageStor 4800 (launched Jul 2015). Category: cloud storage, disk arrays, HPC storage. Core feature: hardware platform designed to run third‑party software‑defined storage stacks, offering up to 800 k IOPS, 48 disks, and 192 TB raw capacity.

Velostrata Inc. – Headquarters: San Jose, CA; CEO: Issy Ben‑Shaul; Flagship product: Velostrata Cloud Edge (launched Aug 2015). Category: hybrid‑cloud storage, virtual backup. Core feature: moves VM workloads to the public cloud while keeping boot images locally, with QoS‑aware caching and predictive data pre‑fetching.