News

Actifio Offers Cloud Alternative to Siloed Storage, Data Management

Actifio extends its copy data virtualization platform With Actifio Sky.

• By Christa Ayer
• 05/20/2014

The problem of data proliferation is causing many organizations to rethink the idea that storage is cheap. Rather than storing what amounts to nothing more than excess copies of the same production data -- for example, copies from backup, data recovery, development and testing, and analytics tools -- Actifio has stepped in with an alternate approach, which it calls copy data virtualization.

Actifio says its copy data virtuaization moves organizations away from multiple copies of siloed data by capturing production data in its native form and creating a single physical copy. An "incremental-forever" model keeps the master data current, and uses it to spawn unlimited virtual copies, across any use case that might require a copy of the production data.

Actifio's took its first step in this space with its Actifio CDS integrated appliance. The company is now extending that offering with the Actifio Sky product family. The Sky products leverage Actifio's Virtual Data Pipeline technology, which decouples data from infrastructure. The initial Sky product supports Remote/Branch Offices (ROBOs) and a cloud deployment option for businesses looking to move enterprise workloads to the cloud.

Actifio Sky's capabilities include point-and-click data management; SLA-based management for remote data protection and disaster recovery for applications; rapid recovery; and the ability to vault data directly to public cloud storage services, including Amazon Web Services.

Actifio announced the Sky ROBO and cloud deployment options in the context of a broader product vision, called Actifio Anywhere. Through this broader approach, Actifio hopes to make its copy data virtualization model available to organizations in whatever form fits best: as an integrated appliance using bundled, existing, or third-party storage; as a virtual appliance deployed into the edge or the cloud; or as a cloud-based platform-as-a-service.