The industry is witnessing an astronomical growth in storage, as companies hoard more data than ever before. This transformation has been largely propelled by the widespread belief that the worst thing you can do with a piece of data is to throw it away.
It is a reasonable impulse; data is one of the most valuable commodities a business owns. Yet, storing every byte of data for a situation when a simple piece of information suddenly becomes incredibly important has created data accumulation problem in companies, both large and small. Not long ago,500 terabytes of data was the concern of Fortune 500 organizations. Today, it is a problem faced by a large number of small and midsize companies as well. Without a comprehensive data strategy, storing vast amounts of data can pose many risks and challenges—from security and compliance to skyrocketing costs and performance issues. Many immediate issues stem from data structuring or the lack of it. Companies that lack the ability to assign value to and organize their data in a meaningful way struggle to deliver the efficiency or agility needed to meet business requirements.
Enter DataEndure
With more than 35 years of experience and expertise in providing storage solutions, DataEndure recognizes the need to continually enhance its service portfolio. Doing so enables them to address customers’ data management needs and desired business outcomes of availability, security, and cost. This is the reason CIOReview chose DataEndure as Company of the Year for its Storage Edition, after evaluating hundreds of innovative and experienced companies globally.
DataEndure places a strong emphasis and sharp focus on fulfilling its clients’ specific needs. As Kurt Klein, the CEO of DataEndure affirms, “We are not about selling a product but about delivering successful business outcomes. Therefore, it is our job to serve as an advocate for the full lifecycle of our customers: understanding their needs, crafting the best solution, and making sure it delivers the intended benefit.” The company’s relentless focus has shaped its business model, hiring practices, and service delivery. With average customer tenure of 10 years, DataEndure seems to be walking the talk.
So, what is unique about DataEndure? According to Shahin Pirooz, CISO, and CTO of DataEndure, “It’s not only about our storage expertise but also the fact that we understand the cloud, security, and information management just as well and know where the important linkages are to help ensure a successful outcome.” For more than 35 years, DataEndure has served industry leaders, such as Cisco, Apple, Google, Renown Health, Chevron, County of Santa Cruz, VISA, Yahoo, and many others, across the healthcare, financial services, and technology sectors.
By adopting a holistic approach, DataEndure architects and delivers a data management and protection strategy designed to simplify enterprise environments and accomplish specific customer goals. In particular, DataEndure helps its clients build digital resilience by understanding the lifecycle of their data in terms of the primary and live data they need to access as well as the redundant or temporary data that they do not need to access.
With respect to the dynamic and automated archival of infrequently used data, DataEndure seamlessly transfers this data from the users and applications to redundant secondary storage. Further, the company can pull meaningful insights out of the stored data. Pirooz adds, “The aim here is two-fold: to assist clients in managing their growing data and to then put them in a position to analyze that data, converting it from zeroes and ones to meaningful business insights that help move their business forward.”
Partnering with DataEndure enables clients to manage their information technology (IT) risks better, respond well when assets are threatened, and protect and access critical information wherever it resides. In one instance, the company stepped in to help global medical organization after they had provisioned NetApp’s ONTAP Cloud from Amazon Marketplace. After moving to the cloud with high expectations, the company’s internal stakeholders began losing confidence when they saw the skyrocketing costs. They nearly abandoned the move to the cloud to stay with their legacy on-premises system, which they understood well. A consultation with DataEndure changed the game. The cloud and storage experts at DataEndure were able to evaluate and optimize the organization’s environment, leading to a 75-percent reduction in the customer’s cloud spend.
Building Digital Resilience
One of the factors that differentiate DataEndure is its core competency of building a digitally flexible and data-centered approach to protect critical information assets and make them available in a timely, cost-effective, and compliant manner. “We believe that the consumption of IT resources is more holistic, and there are more moving parts to it than simply one component, like storage,” states Pirooz. “We articulate this through the concept of digital resilience, which, for us, means that the customers’ end users have access to the data they need, when they need it, and wherever they are, in a secure and compliant fashion.” DataEndure ensures that the storage solution delivered to its clients has layers of access and security controls, with information governance and compliance working in concert to provide a complete offering.
With digital resilience forming the epicenter, DataEndure’s offerings constitute five different practices areas: storage and systems, data management, cloud and data center, security and compliance, and data science. Through this broad portfolio, DataEndure helps clients achieve a comprehensive business continuity strategy, which ensures that their data is safe, secure, and available at all times; in addition, the company offers intelligent tiering to deliver against performance, cost, and archiving requirements.
Partnership with NetApp and the Future
As a Cloud First and Star Partner of NetApp, DataEndure enables its clients to build the right type of storage solution in the right location. While NetApp’s data fabric approach allows clients to leverage similar storage management techniques across on-premise, cloud, and service provider infrastructure, DataEndure delivers integrated solutions that reduce infrastructure complexity and costs while increasing business agility for its clients. “NetApp storage solutions give DataEndure a considerable advantage when we meet with potential customers,” says DataEndure CRO Vince Zappula. The key is the high-end flexibility, scalability, and availability that NetApp provides with clustered Data ONTAP, enabling its storage solutions to scale with a customer’s business. These attributes have carried over into NetApp’s new cloud solution offerings, where the company’s data replication and performance technologies have spurred incredible growth for DataEndure with both new engagements and existing customers moving to the cloud.
DataEndure has indeed grown by leaps and bounds, with continued plans for expansion across its portfolio. “We will continue to research, investigate and test new technology to find solutions that help our customers solve key issues,” says Zappula. “We are heavily invested in NVMe (non-volatile memory express) and educating our customers on the same, such that they can understand the next wave of storage technology and how and where it relates to their business.”
Regarding plans for the future, Klein comments that DataEndure is in the midst of hiring new sales and project management teams. “Being predominantly focused on the West Coast of the United States, we intend to maintain and grow that presence and see opportunities to expand beyond with new services, such as our Security Operations Center (SOC)-as-a-Service,” he elaborates. “For us, the path is clear: continued, profitable, healthy growth while delivering world-class customer service. That’s what has defined us for 35 years, and that’s our path going forward.”
This article originally appeared in the October 2018 issue of CIOReview magazine.