Cloudian Launches Operations in Australia and New Zealand

Cloudian, Inc. launched its operations in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), aiming to capitalise on the local need to manage, protect and leverage massive data sets without sacrificing ease-of-access, exceeding budget limitations or running afoul of data sovereignty requirements.

Founded in 2011 by CEO Michael Tso, who attended high school in Melbourne, the company has become an independent object storage provider, centered on its HyperStore solution. The company has a network of partnerships with some of large cloud and technology companies, including Cisco Systems, Inc., HPE, Lenovo Group Limited, Rubrik, Inc., Veeam Software, Inc. and VMware, Inc.

Led locally by Australian industry veterans James Wright and Jason Mantell-both with prior experience at Nutanix and Pure Storage-the company believes it is positioned to capitalise on Australia and New Zealand’s heightened reliance on data.

“Around 80% of the data created by organizations today is unstructured, primarily images, video and voice data,” said Wright, regional director for ANZ. “But ANZ enterprises and governments are struggling to store this data, protect it and analyse it, particularly given the limitations of traditional storage systems.“

“Cloudian addresses this challenge, providing a limitlessly scalable, highly cost-effective and secure means to store and create real value from increasingly large data sets. We also deliver seamless integration and data movement across on-premises/private cloud and public cloud environments. With data playing an ever more central role in ANZ and increased concern about public cloud data being stored outside national borders, there is a great opportunity to expand the company here.“

Cloudian aims to bolster its local team and partner network in the region and has already signed distribution agreements with Exclusive Networks and Nextgen Distribution Pty Limited,. The company has also begun working with MSPs with expertise in the government, financial and other sectors across ANZ.

Cloud Repatriation Opportunity
Cloudian sees an opportunity in the increasing number of organizations rethinking public cloud storage due to unexpected costs, concerns about data security and control, including data sovereignty and highly variable performance. An industry analyst firm reported that 85% of IT managers surveyed said they are moving some portion of their workloads back from public clouds, a process known as repatriation.

Cloudian offers guaranteed compatibility with the S3 API, the widely adopted protocol of public cloud storage. This allows the full ecosystem of S3-compatible applications to employ Cloudian storage systems on-premises or as part of an in-country service provider’s offerings, which also preserves data sovereignty.

“ANZ businesses are becoming more aware of the drawbacks of storing large volumes of data in the public cloud, but they want that same user experience,” added Wright. “Because of our fully native S3 compatibility, we can provide the scale, flexibility and ease-of-use of the public cloud within a customer’s own data center at up to one-third the cost.“

Increasing Threat of Ransomware
Ransomware attacks have become a growing global threat, and ANZ is not immune. Research last month showed that such attacks have increased by 10% in Australia during Covid-19, while New Zealand has been named among the most vulnerable countries susceptible to a cyberattack. With a feature called Object Lock that prevents hackers from encrypting data, Cloudian can help ANZ organizations protect vs. this threat.

“We know that ransomware attacks often come more than once, as cyber criminals both identify the vulnerability and know the company is willing to pay to unlock their data,” said Wright. “Object Lock creates an immutable copy of backup data, ensuring a clean copy for reliable recovery so businesses are covered when security measures fail.“