StorONE 're-invents' storage stack to set hardware free

Malaise

Oops, Malware, not whatever malate is?!

Too many Es in the url ;)

It sounds too good to be true

But maybe this time, it really is. I'm impressed by the specs.

It's refreshing to see a little skepticism about such vague claims by storage upstarts. Without an actual apples-to-apples comparison - not their NVMe gear vs. someone else's spinning disks as usually happens - it's impossible to say whether they have anything or not. Maybe they really have come up with some great innovation. If so, I'd wonder why they're not bragging about the patents they've already filed. Absent that, this looks like a pitch for investors/acquirers rather than customers. If they're still standing and still independent a year from now, maybe we can have a discussion about the technology then.

simple subscription licensing plan ... The price per GB for a 150TB installation is as low as $0.01

Per year? Per month? Per day? It makes a difference!

Who are those guys?

Well, in a crowded software-defined storage world, being mysterious about how you actually do what you claim to be doing will generate some curiosity and buzz. That said, 35 smart people being paid $150K per person per year could burn through $30M in less than six years. The 50 patents awarded or pending could be researched for information about what StorONE is actually doing. Patents represent a reduction to practice and not just an idea. One patent is typically not enough and is usually accompanied by related and/or nuisance patents to protect the valuable IP. By comparison, Cleversafe, an object-based storage software and hardware startup acquired by IBM for $1.3B in 2015 had amassed 300 patents.

The suggestion that StoreONE is looking for additional funding or a potential acquisition could be plausible but it only has beta customers at this point. By comparison, Cleversafe had over 100 production customers including a three-letter U.S. government intelligence agency when it was acquired by IBM. At some point, StorONE will have to come clean about what they are doing and how they do it. A few years ago, the OpenStack startup Nebula burned through $25M in funding in a couple of years but was unable to attract additional funding despite having investors who were A-list players. Oracle picked up the company for a bargain price basically to hire the people working at Nebula.