Caringo predicts stiffer penetration of big data boxes

Pokes stuffed filers with hockey stick growth

CASTor oils roadmap

A new version of CAStor, release 5.5, is due in December. With the upgrade, object size is virtually unlimited and objects can span across multiple disks. Maximum object size is currently limited to the size of the disks in the system, effectively 3TB. The release will feature chunked encoding, and there are management improvements, with extended hardware reporting via Net-SNMP.

The content router function gets more robust replication speed and progress reporting. There will be graphical storage reporting covering operational activity, CPU and network loading. The NAS function (content file server) gets high availability features.

In this release, CAStor can be used instead of Swift in the OpenStack system through API integration. Goros says CAStor is enterprise-ready whereas Swift is not.

There as also a version 6.0 due next year. This will introduce so-called smarter objects with a smaller footprint.

Caringo is also working on CAStor Cloud Services to enable CAStor to be used in public, private and hybrid clouds with an API approach in release 5/5 and possibly a portal approach in version 6.

The missing hockey stick

Why is object storage penetration so relatively low? Goros said: "It takes time for a huge industry to change … File systems are more popular and more in use than object storage. We see the world moving towards to object storage because of unstructured data rising and big data…. We believe we're just at the beginning of the market place. What we've done over the past five versions is missionary work."

There is a strong feeling in Caringo that the fixed content portion of the unstructured data flood will steadily grow until it becomes the single largest component of an enterprise's stored data. At that point enterprises will have to take a more serious look at object storage and, it's hoped, Caringo's advantages will come to the fore.

There is a lot of competition around: Goros says there are 10, even 20, players. Prominent rivals include EMC Atmos and Isilon, Scality, Amplidata, RackSpace and OpenStack.

Goros claims: "We're much more cost-effective than Isilon. We can mix and match HW" – which Isilon cannot – and: "We have compliance built in."

Caringo hit profitability in the second quarter and the Dell deal is unquestionably a big win. There is everything to play for and Goros and his colleagues are going for it in their steady and thorough way; serious people building a serious product and hoping that the market comes to them. If and when it does, and growth accelerates, then then they may well relax a little and say: "Jolly hockey sticks!" ®