Interview with Dan Decasper, Cirtas CEO and Cofounder
September 21, 2010
Dan Decasper co-founded Cirtas with the vision of enabling the enterprise to utilize cloud storage as if it were a local array.
CloudStorageStrategy.com asked him a few questions about "Cloud Storage Controllers" and what the technology means for the enterprise.
What was the original idea behind Cirtas?
Cirtas’ co-founders previously built a WAN optimization company that was acquired by Citrix. Together, they saw the coming of the cloud and recognized that broad scale adoption of cloud storage would require a "catalyst" technology to make the experience seamless and high performing. They had the expertise to develop such technology and founded Cirtas to address the market need…
A Cloud Storage Controller (CSC) is analogous to the array controllers found in enterprise storage systems, except instead of providing data protection, security, advanced virtualization features, and performance for an array of locally attached disk drives, a Cloud Storage Controller provides these capabilities on top of public cloud storage. The net result is that public cloud storage can be utilized by the enterprise as if it were a local storage array – quickly, easily and for any application.
Who uses them Cloud Storage Controllers? Why do they need them?
Cloud Storage Controllers are used by mid-to-large enterprise – typically organizations with 10TB to several petabytes of data that are looking to reduce their overall cost of storage and simplify their storage environment.
These types of customers need Cloud Storage Controllers because leveraging public cloud storage services is simply not feasible without them. The sheer number of applications running in a typical enterprise precludes them from being re-written to cloud APIs, and other concerns such as security and performance must be overcome. Cloud Storage Controllers address all these concerns in a very robust way, allowing cloud storage to be used like local storage – but with superior economics and simplicity.
What benefits does a CSC offer?
A Cloud Storage Controller offers three main benefits:
1) It creates a seamless and highly robust connection to cloud storage, while requiring no changes to applications running in the data center. Applications are able to access the cloud using standard block and file access protocols on what appears to be a standard logical volume. The magic of the Cloud Storage Controller is in presenting a standard storage interface to servers and applications on the SAN, while connecting to the cloud over the WAN, and requiring nothing of the user to make this happen.
2) It accelerates the performance of applications using cloud storage through advanced WAN acceleration techniques including caching, deduplication, compression, and protocol optimization. These techniques make cloud storage perform like local storage – even over relatively limited Internet connections (e.g. a DS3 at 45Mbps). Furthermore, these same techniques help customers reduce their cloud storage service fees (and total cost of ownership) since they are not storing as much data in the cloud or moving as much data back and forth to it.
3) The Cloud Storage Controller provides the same features and capabilities expected of local storage arrays, such as thin provisioning, automated storage tiering, volume management, snapshots, and more. These capabilities enhance the native functionality of the cloud, making it easier to use and providing superior data protection capabilities.
What applications/data sets make sense for the cloud?
Any Tier 2 or Tier 3 application or data set makes sense for the cloud through a Cloud Storage Controller. The applications that don’t yet make sense are highly mission critical or performance sensitive applications like large databases, ERP systems, and data warehousing. Applications that make perfect sense are home directories, unstructured content storage, SAN offload, archiving, backup/tape replacement, and large-scale data collection (e.g. log storage)
What are your impressions of the cloud storage market today, and where it’s going?
It’s an exciting time to be in the cloud storage market. There’s so much potential and things are just getting going. Cloud storage has been very successful for web applications, and in conjunction with cloud computing. However, it hasn’t yet transcended into a tool for the mainstream enterprise. At Cirtas we’ve got an opportunity to change that and we’re seeing tremendous traction. When we started two years ago, IT managers were aware of the cloud, but were fairly uneducated about it. Today there are increasing numbers of cloud storage initiatives being driven from the CIO level, along with much more recognition of the technology among the media and analyst community as a potential game changer. So these days it’s much easier to engage with customers. Keep an eye on the statistics published by cloud storage providers – you’ll be amazed at the growth rates you see them achieve.