Datrium has also rebranded their platform from DVX to Automatrix, with the logic being that the platform now has all its core components, with DVX being just one, the primary storage.

Datrium has relaunched their multi-cloud data platform with a new name and an important component of new functionality. The addition of Disaster Recovery orchestration completes which the company says is a unique value proposition that is different from hyper-converged infrastructure [HCI] and far superior to traditional storage arrays.

Tim Page, who was one of the five founders of the original VCE, and led its sales organization for its first five years, before transitioning to the COO role there, was named to the CEO role at Datrium a year ago, and says he took the position because the company offered a unique value proposition.

“I realized in talking to Datrium that the fundamentals that had been architected were unique,” he said. “Most companies in Silicon Valley start off with 25 engineers and have to go to market in 18 months. You can do that if it fits a niche. There are lots of those, all good products, and they typically start low in the market, and move up. Datrium started with 100 programmers and took 4.5 years to build. That was a long time, but the result is that we are fully scalable with our software-based solution, and we added a SaaS-based option in January.”

Datrium’s original DVX platform hit general availability in February 2016. While they initially billed themselves as running server-powered flash, they soon positioned their storage controller software with hyperconverged nodes as offering a better alternative in converged infrastructure situations than HCI. They differentiate themselves from the latter, although there are points of similarity, because they scale CPU power and storage capacity separately. Interestingly, they don’t see the HCI players as competitors, although both seem focused on displacing the same legacy storage.

“We aren’t a big array vendor or HCI vendor,” Page said. “We are a new type of storage that can scale into the enterprise, and we see ourselves competing against the big array vendors rather than HCI companies like Nutanix and Cohesity. We don’t believe you need SANs any more. We love VMware but we don’t think anyone else has done for the back end, with an enterprise focus, what VMware did for server virtualization.”

Page said that Datrium has now completed the full portfolio of services necessary to do this, which is also why the platform has been rebranded as Automatrix.

“DVX was the original branding of the platform, but DVX is the product within Automatrix that handles primary storage,” he stated. “We renamed the platform because with DR, we now have our fifth wheel out. Our original objective was to complete the big five data services – primary storage, backup, disaster recovery, full mobility and full encryption. You need all five, or you don’t have full portability.”

“DR completes the story,” said Sazzala Reddy, Datrium’s Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder. “Data is land-locked and cloud-locked. You have to converge all the services together from the ground up, or it won’t work. You need to push a button and all the data moves – primary, backup and DR all moving together.”

Reddy noted that the platform is fully automated, which is why they choose Automatrix for the rebranding. He also stressed that Datrium’s approach is superior to hyper-converged vendors who purchase or partner to obtain their backup component.

“This is one product, not two,” he said. “We don’t have a backup that is bolted on. Building it from the ground up allows functions to go with the data wherever they go. You can’t rehydrate every piece of data.”

The first generally available app for the new Automatrix platform is ControlShift, a SaaS app which handles data mobility orchestration, including workflow automation for zero-RTO disaster recovery optimized for VMware Cloud DR.  Datrium says the platform’s total portability lets ControlShift deliver an industry-leading recovery compliance objective (RCO) of 30 minutes, very low recovery point objectives (RPO) and instant recovery time objective (RTO).

ControlShift is a rebranding of CloudShift, which Datrium first announced last summer.

“We changed the name because CloudShift was trademarked,” Page said. “ControlShift is a better name anyway. It’s not just to the cloud.”

ControlShift will be followed by apps for analytics, compliance and search.

‘By Q2 we will offer DR for non-DVX hosts and failover to VMC,” Page indicated. “We will come out with significant new products every four to six months.”

This will include more data services on AWS within the year, including primary storage that complements the capacity in Datrium Cloud DVX. It will also include fuller multi-cloud capability, by porting to Microsoft Azure in 2020.

“Now that the DR is finished, we won’t be adding anything to our base code, however,” Page said.

With this release, Datrium has also significantly upped the capacity of their Cloud DVX solution.

“Before, it was 30 TB and now it is 1.15 PB – an increase of 38x,” Page noted.

Datrium has a 100 per cent channel go-to-market model.

“A number of big regional channel players now run us in their data centres,” he said.