Following similar offerings introduced last year for law enforcement and education, Storagecraft adds a new offering for health care, which combines their OneXafe converged data platform with messaging aimed at a specific vertical, and go-to-market reseller partners selected and trained around the solution.
StorageCraft has launched StorageCraft for Healthcare, a converged scale-out primary and secondary data platform with integrated data protection specifically targeted at the unique problems and characteristics of the health care sector. It comes following the release last year of similar initiatives which targeted the law enforcement and then the education verticals.
“We are excited that this will be a great solution for our customers, and we will work closely with our partners to deliver these benefits to the health care verticals,” said Shridar Subramanian, Vice President, Product Management and Marketing at StorageCraft.
The health care solution, like the first two, uses StorageCraft’s OneXafe converged data platform for both primary and secondary data, and data protection, with the full converged solution starting with 120 TB of capacity
“From a product perspective it is very similar to the other two solutions,” Subramanian said. “The difference is the Go-to-Market motion. We have designed this to highlight the key benefits for the customer in the health care industry so that they can easily see what is in it for them. The other aspect that is different is the partners. We work with partners who have a very deep focus on health care. This is what we did with the law enforcement and vertical solutions as well. We start with a few really good partners, and as we roll out further, we find that more of our existing partner base decide to specialize and sign up for this, so the number of partners increases over time. In this case, getting the right channel partners to work with accounts for the timing of this vertical solution. We already have a lot of health care customers who are deploying this.”
Subramanian said that the health care industry has common issues around storage with other customers, as well as some issues which are created by its specific characteristics. The common element is the sheer growth in this data, which in this vertical is being amplified by the widely standardized use of electronic health records and medical imaging, plus the growth in data intensive health applications such as wearable technologies and telemedicine.
Shridar Subramanian, Vice President, Product Management and Marketing at StorageCraft
“With health care, the amount of data that is generated is also very unpredictable, because it is determined by the type of patients that come in,” Subramanian said. “Many tests are now stored online, and they generate a ton of data. Being able to access the data is another issue, because in health care, it can have with life and death consequences. So being able to get to it instantly is important. Many hospitals do get attacked by ransomware and DDOS attacks. StorageCraft does not stop ransomware attacks, but we do help in recovering the data immediately afterwards.”
The scale-out nature of OneXafe is suited to this kind of market with unpredictable data growth, Subramanian said.
“Scale out means you buy only what is needed at that point of time,” he said. “Alternative solutions are not only more expensive per GB, but you also have to pre-purchase everything at once. Since prices in this business have been going down, you pre-purchase at a higher point. But with us, you buy only what you need, and can add capacity on the fly.”
Subramanian said that the law enforcement vertical solution has done particularly well since its introduction.
“Quite a few customers have installed bodycams, so this has done well,” he noted. “We also got requests after that for using the solution for surveillance cameras.”
Demand for the education solution is very cyclical.
“A lot of SLED demand depends on budget cycles,” Subramanian said. “We expect it will be higher in April and May.”
Looking ahead, likely candidates for addition vertical solutions include one for manufacturing and one for physical security and surveillance.
“Those are the ones that are top of mind, but we will evaluate others,” Subramanian said. “We are getting requests from customers for something around surveillance, but we have to build a partner base for that. Like in health care, we have to identify the right partners to go to market with.”
A complete OneXafe converged scale-out data protection solution, optimized for mid-sized healthcare organizations, begins at $USD 63,248 for 120TB. It includes all software, hardware, and data protection services for an unlimited number of virtual and physical servers. A OneXafe scale-out storage solution starts at $USD 13,995.
