Cloudian recently made an interesting move by scooping up Infinity Storage. This is more than a little curious. The big draw around Infinity Storage is that they provide file storage, whereas Cloudian has made it’s name as an object storage provider. Except that as we’ve covered, Cloudian now offers file services via HyperFile. So… why spend the money on the acquisition?
Chris Evans outlines a number of possibilities in this post. His overall takeaway is that this is about bringing on a team that knows file storage inside and out, and adding that to their staff. This will enable them to continue to refine HyperFile and make it a compelling argument. The real challenge for Cloudian going forward is broader than simply making file work on their hardware. It’s about finding ways to make object storage (or at least an object storage backend) more applicable to a wider range of customers. Object storage already works well for people that have always needed object storage, organizations with huge workloads aren’t looking to move anywhere. Cloudian needs to find out how to get a hold of smaller organizations with quickly growing, but currently small, storage needs. Part of this is offering file services. But a larger part is making all of this work simply.
Acquiring Infinity Storage doesn’t solve anything by itself. But it plays into a larger story of refinement that bodes well for Cloudian.
Chris Evans comments:
Why did Cloudian acquire Infinity Storage, a relatively small player in the storage market? The answer is expertise. Last week I spent some time with Cloudian CEO Michael Tso and Infinity Storage co-founder, Caterina Falchi. Mike explained the time Cloudian had taken to search out and evaluate a range of file offerings in the market, yet not quite finding exactly what the company was looking for.
Read more at: Cloudian Acquires Infinity Storage
