Cloud services and hyperscale computing enable enterprises to mine insights from massive amounts of data, but they also add new levels of complexity in storing and protecting all that information.

Solving for that complexity is Infinidat Ltd., founded in 2011. The company aspires to be a one-stop storage solution provider with products that encompass data storage, data protection, cloud storage and more.

Enterprises can’t afford to take chances with their data, according to Eric Herzog (pictured), chief marketing officer of Infinidat. That means they need storage they can depend on. Chief information officers “are starting to realize that if you’re going to have a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, it must include storage,” Herzog said. “That is new.”

In response, Infinidat provides a 100% availability guarantee on its primary storage, as well as guaranteed recovery times.

“The most important thing if you’re attacked is how fast can you be up and going again,” Herzog said. “We’re guaranteeing no downtime.”

Infinidat is also bundling free technology into its InfiniBox enterprise storage system to ensure that data is protected and quickly available.

Herzog spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Lisa Martin during an exclusive CUBE Conversation to discuss Infinidat’s data storage solutions, its cyber-resiliency guarantees, and how the company saves its clients money on capital expenditure. (* Disclosure below.)

CIOs need to pay attention to storage

One big challenge tech leaders face is the need for storage administrators to handle growing data volumes. This is a problem that often flies below the CIO’s radar. Herzog has worked in storage since 1986 and “never met a CIO” at any company he’s worked with.

“They know they need [storage], but boy, they really don’t like it,” he stated.

CIOs need to recognize that data protection at the storage level should be a high priority, particularly with the growing scourge of ransomware, Herzog added. Infinidat is looking to make the task of protecting large data volumes less intimidating.

The company has implemented a primary storage technology called InfiniSafe that comes free with its main product. The technology creates what Herzog calls a “logical air gap that can be local or remote. We create an immutable snapshot, which means it can’t be altered so customers know that what they’re getting is what they were supposed to be getting.”

Infinidat has also introduced a similar technology for its InfiniGuard backup solution that provides comparable protection on secondary storage. And the company says it can now guarantee a recovery time of under one minute on primary storage and 20 minutes on secondary storage.

“We are the first and only storage company that offers a primary guarantee on cyber storage resilience,” Herzog said. “And we offer two of them on primary storage.”

The technologies are undergirded by a set of reference architectures that engineers, solution architects and technical advisors are required to master. “We go to extra lengths to A), be educated on our own front, with our own teams, and B), make sure they portray that to the end users and our channel partners,” Herzog stated.

In addition to the availability guarantee, the company also offers a performance guarantee based on an analysis of a client’s workload that recommends optimal performance goals and Infinidat products that will work the best with their infrastructure. The company also just announced a cyber-resiliency guarantee for its InfinGuard backup system that provides for sub-20-minute recovery. At a recent demonstration, it showed the ability to recover 20 petabytes of data backed up with software by Veeam Software Corp. in just 12 minutes, Herzog explained.

Other customers have reported reductions in backup times from two hours to 20 minutes and up to three-fold improvements in performance.

“They didn’t touch the applications, and they didn’t touch the servers,” Herzog said. “All they do is put our storage in there.”

The need for green

With its primary focus being large enterprises, Infinidat only sells products that can handle petabyte-scale volumes. Its primary storage product can accommodate up to 17 petabytes of capacity in a single rack for power and floor space savings that server data center owners’ need for greener operations and lower overhead expenses. Saving on capital expenditure is a high priority for many of Infinidat’s clients, according to Herzog. Fully automated products that use artificial intelligence reduce the need for hands-on maintenance while optimizing energy usage.

“We’ve got several public references who said they haven’t touched [their Infinidat storage appliance] in three or four years,” Herzog said. “It automatically configures itself. It automatically adjusts to changes in performance and new apps. We automatically [optimize performance] and do it autonomously so the admin doesn’t even click a button.”

Infinidat works with all major backup vendors, including IBM, Commvault Systems, Veeam, Veritas Technologies and others. It also guarantees full cyber resilience, with measures such as malware testing embedded in its main product. And, the company stresses simplicity through integration. In the case of several competitors, “if you want the fenced environment, you must buy a second product, but with us it’s all embedded,” Herzog said. “That not only makes it more effective from a CapEx and OpEx perspective, but also it easier” to install and administer.

Recent updates to InfiniBox, InfiniSafe and InfiniGuard are “available now, either through our teams or through our channel partners globally,” Herzog said. “We do about 80% of our business globally through the channel, so whether you talk to us or talk to our channel partners, we’re there to help. We put our money where our mouth is with those guarantees, and we make sure we stand behind our products.”

Here’s the complete video interview, one of many CUBE Conversations from SiliconANGLE and theCUBE:

Photo: SiliconANGLE