MinIO, OpenIO and SoftIron Named IDC Innovators

International Data Corporation (IDC) published an IDC Innovators report profiling three companies that offer open source object storage for high performance workloads.

The three companies are MinIO, Inc., OpenIO SAS, and SoftIron Ltd.

Organizations are looking for scalable and cost-effective storage solutions for production workloads such as AI, ML and media streaming. And IDC’s research indicates that organizations are considering object storage for these workloads. This finding is backed by changes taking place in the industry where several start-ups are leveraging open source software to make object storage a viable technology for use cases.

“Ceph is a predominant open source object storage software with significant market penetration across all industries and customers large and small with a focus on archival uses,” said Amita Potnis, research director, infrastructure systems, platforms and technology group, IDC. “The market now has more open source options to consider as object-based start-up vendors such as MinIO, SoftIron, and OpenIO are offering open source object storage software and appliances specifically geared towards high performance workloads.“

The report, IDC Innovators: Next gen Open Source Object Storage Target High Performance Workloads 2019 (IDC #US45652319, $2,500), profiles 3 companies that offer open source object storage for high performance workloads:

• MinIO’s object storage solution is an open source offering under Apache V2 license and targets high performance workloads such as AI, ML, and application data. Since its launch, It has seen over 268 million docker pulls and over 480 contributors.
• OpenIO seeks to alter the notion that object storage is a low-cost, high-scalability option geared specifically for cold storage or active archival. It aims to deliver software-defined object storage that meets the demands of big data and AI workloads.
• SoftIron offers a Ceph-based purpose-built object storage appliance geared towards high performance workloads. It prides itself in designing its own controller and assembling the storage devices in California.

About IDC Innovator
IDC Innovators reports present a set of vendors – under $100 million in revenue at time of selection – chosen by an IDC analyst within a specific market that offer an innovative technology, a groundbreaking approach to an existing issue, and/or an interesting new business model. It is not an exhaustive evaluation of all companies in a segment or a comparative ranking of the companies. Vendors in the process of being acquired by a larger company may be included in the report provided the acquisition is not finalized at the time of publication of the report. Vendors funded by VC firms may also be included in the report even if the VC firm has a financial stake in the vendor’s company.