Belgian Start-up Barton Systems Offers High-end Storage Systems

The Belgian start-up Barton Systems, part of Cronos Group, has teamed up with Microsoft Corporation to develop a storage system for medium and large enterprises.

This means companies can use standard Windows machines to store large amounts of critical data. Barton Systems offers these storage systems as a managed service: configuration, installation, monitoring and maintenance are provided for a price agreed in advance.

The storage systems of Barton work with selected server hardware from Dell, Inc., HPE and Lenovo, based on Storage Spaces Direct. This is a component of the Windows Server Nano OS, a slimmed-down version of Windows Server 2016. Software developed in-house by Barton provides additional capabilities in terms of availability, automatic configuration and management.

“We want to make critical storage as easy as possible,” says Johan Vermeulen, CTO, Barton. “Traditional high-end storage systems are taken care of by specialized teams that are almost completely dedicated to monitoring and configuration. Our software-defined storage means that’s all over. Moreover, companies don’t need separate teams of storage specialists for this – their Windows Server team can take care of this task.”

So Barton uses standard x86 server hardware. Compared with traditional SAN and NAS storage systems, It offers enhanced performance, more capacity, flexible growth opportunities and easier management – all for a comparable budget. The systems can operate through the existing server network.

The managed storage services of Barton mean that companies can count on support day and night. Possible software updates are included and every month customers receive a report that assesses the agreed service levels. The storage systems and network are constantly monitored. If there is an unexpected problem, the people at Barton automatically receive a timely alert, before the availability of the data becomes jeopardized. This allows the technicians to intervene immediately.