10 Sizzling Storage Startups

Like any technology space, storage is represented by a handful of established market leaders and dozens of startups vying for the IT buyer’s attention. It may be tempting to limit your shortlist to the likes of EMC, NetApp, and IBM, but doing so may come at a cost. Some of the more established startups offer a level of innovation that you won’t find with your bigger vendors.

The default for most organizations is to evaluate and purchase technology from behemoth vendors whom they know will be around to support the product three years from now. But that comfort level often comes at the price of limited innovation. And with so much innovation going on in the storage market today, from all-flash arrays to software-defined storage and hyper-convergence, customers shouldn't settle for the status quo.

Howard Marks, founder and chief scientist at DeepStorage LLC, advises IT buyers to pay close attention to a group of storage startups he dubs upstarts. More established than the average startup, these companies offer the innovation you find from a startup and the security you get from a market leader. According to Marks, a Network Computing contributor, the key characteristics of an upstart are VC confidence, announcements of growing sales, and innovative technology.

In this slideshow, we present 10 storage startups that are worthy of consideration. These companies are leading the way with ground-breaking storage technologies that promise to reshape the enterprise storage landscape.