FalconStor Acquired Source Code Distribution License From Cumulus Logic

FalconStor  Software, Inc. has acquired an exclusive source code distribution license from stealthy start-up Cumulus Logic for a next-generation and intelligent cloud-based predictive analytics monitoring system for FalconStor’s FreeStor, a single, converged, hardware-agnostic data services software platform that works horizontally across all heterogeneous storage hardware, including all-flash arrays, hybrid flash, and HDD arrays.

FreeStor is bringing core intelligence to the software-defined data center – Intelligent Abstraction and Intelligent Predictive Analytics that work in real-time for visualization, analysis and action with capabilities similar to the historical analysis provide by software tools like Splunk and Tableau.

In addition to ‘smart rules’-based tools for performance monitoring, capacity planning, and other insights to maximize storage resources – which many hardware vendors lack – the cloud-based engine will also enable secure multi-tenancy for service providers that manage their customers  data and infrastructure, and support private cloud infrastructures.

“The recent ubiquity of flash adoption, the coming deluge of 3D NAND flash and the rapid growth in big data is fostering a great need for service providers and their vendors to understand the health and the capacity of their flash and hybrid storage platforms with real-time capabilities not multi-day old data,” says Iqlas Ottamalika, founder and CEO, Cumulus Logic. “This is a new era of analytical monitoring for storage platforms as it will help service providers to strategize and react at lightning-speed, if necessary. Working with such a renowned software-defined storage provider as FalconStor, we hope to usher in a new era of Intelligence for all-flash and hybrid storage array analytics.“

“This exclusive partnership will provide service providers and their customers with an enhanced cloud-based monitoring management system. It is a tremendous step forward as we believe that only our FreeStor platform can truly deliver this promise to the industry,” said Gary Quinn, CEO, FalconStor. “This joint effort between FreeStor and Cumulus Logic will offer abilities not seen in other solutions. For instance, it can be used on any storage resource, regardless of vendor or type on premise or in-the-cloud. FreeStor’s intelligence will be enhanced to help the enterprise manage, automate, optimize and proactively react within storage environments across the data center.”

FreeStor’s analytics will also be used to immediately notify customers of varying hardware problems such as I/O bottlenecks, capacity issues and SLA gaps. The streaming analytics will not only provide real-time data, but provide historical and global trending reports that will enhance FreeStor s ability to deliver non-stop business productivity and simplified data management.

New interface enhancements will enable FreeStor to be deployed on many devices including the desktop, iPad and mobile tablets and phones, allowing IT personnel to monitor from any location.

“FreeStor gives enterprises and service providers the freedom to choose the hardware that makes the best sense for their business. Watching capacity and performance is not where the monitoring tools job should stop,” said Tim Stammers, senior analyst, 451 Research.” When you consider the range of issues such as firmware, connectivity or other problems that can cause poor application performance, what really matters is being able to analyze entire storage infrastructures regardless of vendor, and then correlating that data to decide the right corrective action and hence  impact an organization s bottom line.”  

FreeStor s Cumulus Intelligent Predictive Analytics
will include multiple features including the following:

• Centralized monitoring, analytics and configuration across heterogeneous storage infrastructures
• Analyze and report storage, server and application metrics on varying levels
• Multi-Vendor Analytics: Collect, analyze and correlate data from Storage  and Application layers
• Historical and real-time trends and reports
• Streaming analytics and real time insights
• Proactively detect and alert performance bottlenecks and health risks using a real time analytics module
• Personalized dashboards
• Native iPhone/Android apps  mobile functionality
• Real time performance, health and inventory monitoring
• Define health policies for storage servers, and act on those in real-time

Under this licensing and joint-development agreement, FalconStor will modify and enhance Cumulus technology to customize an analytics engine for FreeStor, with all resulting intellectual property exclusively owned by FalconStor.