In the midst of the digital transformation, the mandates for IT organizations have now changed, and one of the bigger changes is moving from the well-accustomed public cloud to multi-cloud environment. Multi-cloud is better leveraging the data both from the outside sources as well as internally. It is important to get adapted to this new environment as it helps in building an enterprise that is much more efficient.
Led by Jim Liddle, CEO, Storage Made Easy provides a multi-cloud data management and data protection product called the Enterprise File Fabric™ that unifies on-premises and on-cloud company storage assets. It solves the enterprise data sprawl problem in which company data is located on-premises, a data centre, and increasingly, the Cloud.
The Journey-
No journey starts out smooth, there are a number of obstacles one has to overcome through it. In the case of business ventures, it is the same. Sometimes there are challenges that you could not have foreseen. But getting over those and standing strong is what counts.
Although, Storage Made Easy’s challenge was quite a different one; their vision was simply too early! It might not sound like a challenge, but it was, as when they first started no-one was talking about multi-cloud and data federation. This is not unusual for startups. Having worked with start-ups earlier, Jim knew that the actual challenge was to stay the course until the market matures.
The first step to success is not giving up! In the main, start-ups don’t fail because they run out of money, or that the idea was a bad one, it is because founders either fell out or gave up because the journey became ‘just too difficult’. So to answer why SME is still here is easy, it is because of-
Strong technology, great team, slices of luck along the way – and we did not give up!
The Products and Services-
The File Fabric solution offers a “blanket” that company’s can privately apply to wrap around all their data: on-premises, within a public cloud, or on a third party software vendors’ cloud (SharePoint or Salesforce for example). Customers can use the File Fabric for security, encryption and control with a focus on compliance regimes such as GDPR, HIPPA, FERPA and GBLA.
Storage Made Easy offers three variants of the product:
- The Enterprise File Fabric for Compliance
- The Enterprise File Fabric for Media
- The Enterprise File Fabric for Secure File Sharing
Storage Made Easy’s Enterprise File Fabric for Secure File Sharing is their entry level product. It is what the other two variants are based upon and it focuses on ultra secure file/folder sharing for file storage and object storage.
The Enterprise File Fabric for Compliance builds on this with content search and content discovery modules. The content search indexes the contents of files and objects to essentially provide a company with a private search engine for corporate data. The Content Discovery module provides continuous real-time discovery of PHI/PII data and Ransom ware protection.
We take any customer loss personally and we really do try ‘and go the extra mile’ to make our customers happy.
Storage Made Easy’s The Enterprise File Fabric for Media provides a unified view of media assets that can be dispersed on-cloud and on-premises. In addition to file transfer acceleration of media assets, it provides smart indexing and data classifications, with Cloud AI integrations, that ensures media assets can be easily catalogued and found.
No data is replicated or proprietized.Its metadata is smart-indexed and this forms the basis of the File Fabric being able to provide secure sharing and collaboration, content search and PHI/PII discovery, and intelligent policy based enforcement of data for compliance legislature such as GDPR / CCPA / HIPAA.
M-Stream, a feature of the File Fabric, also accelerates data to/from destinations up to 10x. FIPS certified encryption ensures corporate file/object assets are protected in-flight and at-rest.
Storage Made Easy’s File Fabric enables a company to make a ROI return on its most important asset, its data.
Storage Made Easy has recently announced a partnership with BackBlaze that they are pretty excited about and their Cloudian partner relationship continues to go from strength to strength. The Enterprise File Fabric can be purchased directly from Cloudian and is highly complementary to their Hyperstore Object Storage solution.
“We are focusing on technology partnerships, channel partnerships and country distributors to help strengthen and broaden our sales capabilities.”
Jim Liddle and the Team-
“Being an entrepreneur you have to be a bit of a chameleon, especially in the early days of forming a company. You have to be pretty good at a lot of different things and become very broad in your skill sets.”
Coming out of University Jim worked on a number of technical projects, both software and hardware and then formed a couple of start-ups in the late 90’s where, looking back, he learned quite a lot of what worked (and what did not). After this he worked for a number of start-ups in various technical, sales, product management and managerial roles before forming Storage Made Easy.
Jim’s job is essentially doing three things for the team. The first is to use his experience to provide guidance and help; the second is try and help them grow in what they do; the third is to try and handle what gets in the way of making them productive in their role – the ‘noise’. On a day to day basis he achieves this with varying degrees of success and of course like everyone else he sometimes fails entirely but the next day you brush yourself down and try harder.
With my team I set the direction and focus of the business in addition to defining the business goals.
Jim’s take on Staying Ahead in the Game-
You need a strategy to create a culture of constant vigilance within a company. It needs to be embedded in the Company DNA. This applies to whether you are trying to create the right culture for security and cyber security vigilance or whether it is related to product and opportunity vigilance. Without a strategy inclusive of the complete Company’s buy-in to that strategy, you just won’t get there. There is a lot going on in the world at the moment that, if you let it, could drag you down, but there are shining pockets of humanity that restore your faith and perspective. The sheer goodness of people during the current pandemic is a good example of that.
