A day of data storage and backup exclusives, and product demos: what we learned at Technology Live!

Record-breaking technology, geographical expansion, and product developments - the exclusive announcements came thick and fast at the latest edition of A3 Communications’ Technology Live! in February. Hammerspace, Keepit, Nimbus Data, and Own Company came together at the London edition of this industry-leading influencer event to offer a deep dive into new technologies and drill down into company roadmaps, providing a unique insight into four data storage and backup experts.

Hammerspace’s double whammy Global data environment software expert Hammerspace shared two meaty and brand new announcements for the Technology Live! audience to sink their teeth into. First, audience members were given the chance to see what the company is calling the fastest file system in the world for training enterprise AI models at scale.

This high-performance NAS architecture is designed to address the requirements of broad-based enterprise AI, machine learning, and deep learning (AI/ML/DL) initiatives and the widespread rise of GPU computing both on-premises and in the cloud. A new category of storage architecture, Hyperscale NAS is built on the tenants required for large language model (LLM) training and provides the speed to efficiently power GPU clusters of any size for GenAI, rendering, and enterprise high-performance computing.

"In an era where the digital landscape is evolving at an unprecedented rate, the imperative for IT teams to innovate and rethink their infrastructure and data strategy has never been more critical. Traditional data storage solutions, once optimised for user home directories and cost-effective long-term capacity, now struggle to meet the heightened performance demands of modern GPU compute clusters. As enterprises increasingly deploy advanced computing capabilities for AI training, video rendering, and data analytics, the urgency to architect a robust data pipeline capable of sustaining these clusters has escalated. We stand at the threshold of the next data cycle, where our ability to adapt and enhance our data strategies will not only drive technological advancement but also pave the way for future innovations,” said Hammerspace founder and CEO David Flynn.

In a second exclusive announcement, Flynn also revealed a major advancement to the company’s Global Data Environment software. In an in-depth walk-through, Flynn set out how adding NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage support to its flagship solution Hammerspace Hyperscale NAS brings new levels of speed and efficiency to address emerging AI and GPU computing applications.

KeepIt’s UK expansion

Announcing the opening of a UK headquarters in the City of London and the expansion of its UK team, Keepit VP for UK, I, and MEA Jerry Mumford set out the region’s importance to the Danish backup and recovery company’s growth strategy: “The UK market is significant, with a robust IT infrastructure and high levels of new technology adoption. But that means it is also a key target for cybercriminals and of course data loss can seriously impact business continuity. Our commitment to vendor independence, broad service coverage, fast recovery times, and dedication to security, will mean that more UK organisations will have the resilience to keep their businesses running, even when disaster strikes.”

And in a UK first, the Keepit team demonstrated just how its Keepit platform provides vendor-independent SaaS data protection for data stored in the cloud, walking through how data is stored separately from the production environment for data sovereignty compliance. UK data, for example, is stored in two UK data centres with no sub-processors, ensuring that data never leaves the country.

Headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, with offices in the US, Germany, and now the UK, Keepit counts The National Gallery and Oxford University Innovation Ltd among its UK customers.

The next generation for Nimbus Data Flash storage developer Nimbus Data set out its roadmap for 2024. In a grand reveal, CEO and founder Thomas Isakovich previewed the public launch of a next-generation Nimbus Data storage platform slated for later this year. The platform promises to scale linearly while supporting all data types (block, file, object), networks, and workloads (from extreme performance to maximum efficiency). Its discrete scale-out federated architecture offers low latency, high density, and lower cost than alternative architectures.

Taking the audience through the key features, Isakovich explained the platform’s rigorous customer testing over the past two years, and how the Nimbus Data team has refined it to scale to 4.5 PB raw (up to 15 PB usable) and optimise the data pipeline.

In the coming months, watch out for announcements on public cloud, server controllers, and intelligent SSDs in what promises to be a busy year for the company.

Own Company unveils new solution to unlock data insights In an exclusive demo, SaaS data platform Own Company unveiled its new Own Discover solution which offers quick and easy access to backed up data in a time-series format, opening up historical SaaS data to unlock insights, accelerate AI innovation, and more.

Speaking at the event, Graham Russell, Director of Market Intelligence, said: “At Own, our goal has always been to enable our customers to protect their data. But in today’s highly competitive environment, being able to learn from your past is vital - your historical data is your strategic advantage. And that is what Discover is all about: activating analytics, AI, and data portability.”

With API access to any backup data and a fully-managed data lakehouse, Own Discover is privacy compliant and offers zero-extract, transform, and load (ETL) data ingestion and token-based authentication. Part of the Own Data Platform, the solution gives customers access to all their backed up data in a time-series format so they can analyse their historical SaaS data to identify trends and uncover hidden insights. It also offers the opportunity to train machine learning models faster, enabling AI-driven decisions and actions; and integrate SaaS data to external systems while maintaining security and governance.

This showcase of new solutions and company announcements highlights how data storage and backup experts are stepping up to some of the biggest data challenges IT organisations are facing today. Innovations from companies like these will be vital as customers become more insight-driven and expect more from their backups.

Established in 2015, Technology Live! is a one-day deep-dive event where up to four vendors showcase their technologies to the region’s leading journalists, bloggers, analysts, and other independent influencers. The event heads to Munich, Germany, and Paris, France in May. It will return to London, UK, in November.