Open-source storage software developer Gluster is growing, and expanding its partnerbase has proven to be a very effective strategy so far. The latest announcement from the company says it partnered up with Savage IO, a veteran-owned NAS network storage servers maker. The latter will be integrating Gluster’s GlusterFS platform into its  data storage systems, which are used in both on-premise and cloud deployments.

“Storage costs have been increasing dramatically due to the explosion of data and enterprise budgets are straining under the weight of high-cost storage systems from traditional vendors,” said Jeff Olson of Gluster. “By partnering with Savage IO, we are uniting two companies focused on the same mission–delivering quality storage solutions cost effectively.”

Cost efficiency is an element both storage vendors emphasize with their individual offerings.  The wind is blowing from the direction of the customers that are looking to build out their IT infrastructures in the most affordable way possible, which is why companies such as Facebook have been designing their own components over at the server market. Many others do the same, and this is starting to leave a mark for vendors such as HP and Dell.

Gluster on the other hand has been expanding its business steadily.  The latest version of GlusterFS introduced Hadoop support, a major milestone for the company in light of the wider big data trend making its way across the IT industry today.

GlusterFS 3.3 beta 2 comes with N-way replication, and eliminates block and volume sizes. It also gained a new high profile customer recently.  Biometric signature verification solutions CIC is now running Gluster’s platform in its AWS and RightScale environment. Cost efficiency was noted as one of the main reasons the firm selected Gluster’s service.