Cloudian's better at Amazon S3 than anyone else, apparently Object storage startup Cloudian says it's the most S3-compliant of all object-storage vendors, and this really, really, really matters. We had our ears bent by Cloudian's sales VP, Jon Ash, about this, after asking why on Earth it mattered. First of all, it needs pointing out that there is no industry standard for Amazon S3, …
Well, Mr. Ash from Cloudian is not bragging, he is just explaining the features already available in Cloudian's HyperStore software defined storage software. Every object-based storage software vendor supports at least the basic AWS S3 functions, but S3 is not their native API.
Cloudian made three "bets" with their HyperStore object-based storage software architecture. 1) Cassandra, which Cloudian extends for use as its metadata storage service, has numerous real-world use cases and is well tested and supported. Apple is reported to have 70K Cassandra servers. 2) Native support for AWS S3. AWS has the largest "ecosystem" of applications and solutions written to use S3. Cloudian's compliance with all of the S3 API functions means any S3 application or solution will work with Cloudian HyperStore. 3) Hybrid cloud storage would become a requirement for enterprise customers creating their own local storage clouds. Cloudian can tier data from HyperStore clusters to AWS S3 or Glacier, which by the way, actually have different sets of API functions.
Cloudian has been approached by other object-based storage software vendors interested in licensing Cloudian's native AWS S3 compliant service. Cloudian has chosen not to do it, because it is a key to their success in the capacity storage market.
In terms of actual customers...Cleversafe has about 150, Scality has between 50 and 100 and SwiftStack has just over 50. So for Cloudian to "bust a move" and achieve as many new customers as all three of these combined, it will need to on-board about 250 new customers. This is a significant challenge and it will be interesting to see if Cloudian can do it in conjunction with their reseller partner channel.
(Disclosure, I work for HDS)
The article states...
V4SIG support is required, Ash says, for all new AWS regions and: "Today Cloudian is the only Object vendor to support V4SIG."
This is not correct. The Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) is S3 compliant and supports V4SIG (and has for some time). Some of the largest AWS customers in the world leverage HCP's object storage with S3. In terms of the number of HCP customers... let's just say it's greater than 1,000.
Happy to answer any questions without getting into a sales pitch :)
To the HDS responder - thanks for the update and congratulations on adding V4SIG support. Your claim to have had it for "some time" seems a little strong, as according to Chris Mellors recent post you had it late October - 3 months before this article.
What about the other three features I mentioned? Do you fully support S3 for each of these? Cloudian guarantees 100% S3 compatibility: it's the native interface for Cloudian HyperStore object storage.
Various vendors are claiming support for one or more of the S3 features. It's good they are slowly improving their support, because it’s really, really important and they need to get it right. S3 is the de facto standard for object storage and so to ensure compatibility with all the S3 apps you need full support. You don’t buy NFS that is 60% compliant, so why would you buy a solution that is 60% S3 compliant?
We challenge any vendor to come forward and let an independent analyst test our respective S3 APIs for compatibility with the spec. Happy to work with all vendors on this. S3 is the
standard after all.
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