News

SwiftStack Upgrades Object Storage for Enterprise Private Clouds

• By David Ramel
• 04/26/2016

With a mission to help organizations move from traditional file systems to more flexible, scalable cloud infrastructures, SwiftStack has upgraded its namesake "enterprise-ready object storage software."

SwiftStack 4.0 features "new customer-driven capabilities that deliver scale and metadata search as well as plans for file native access and cloud synchronization," the company said in an announcement today.

Based on the open source OpenStack Swift project, the offering provides universal access to scale-out object storage, the company said, while synchronizing with any public cloud based on the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3).

"The world's business models require the benefits of cloud infrastructure of some kind for every industry and sector -- from life sciences and digital media to government and enterprise environments," said exec Joe Arnold. "Organizations continue to demand storage that is easier to consume and to pay for storage as they grow. SwiftStack was founded to help customers on this journey from the infrastructure they've had to the architecture they need. Our product enhancements in 2016 give them storage for today's applications and sets them on the path to scale their applications of tomorrow."

New features of the version 4.0 software highlighted by SwiftStack include:

• Integrated load balancing that reduces the need for expensive dedicated network hardware and minimizes latency and bandwidth costs while scaling to larger numbers of nodes.
• Metadata search that increases business value by integrating with third-party indexing and search services to make stored object data analytics-ready.
• SwiftStack Drive, an optional desktop client that enables access to cluster data directly from desktops or laptops.
• Enhanced management with new IPv6 support, capacity planning and advanced data migration tools.

"After years of being dismissed as an archival storage platform, object-based storage is re-emerging as the technology of choice for massive cloud storage platforms and media delivery systems as well as for enterprises that are finally becoming aware of the power and flexibility that a metadata-rich storage environment can provide," SwiftStack quoted 451 Research analyst Steven Hill as saying. "Object storage such as SwiftStack's latest platform is proving to be the multi-tool of the modern storage industry, offering the ability to deliver file and object-based front end capabilities while providing exceptional data protection, analytics and policy management in the background."