DataCore Acquires Caringo In Major Software-defined Storage Play

‘As customers moved towards object storage, we decided an acquisition would be the fastest way to get it. Caringo had the most advanced technology, but was lacking the financial backing and the support of a strong channel. There are other object storage companies, but they don’t have the maturity the Caringo Swarm offers,’ says Gerardo Dada, DataCore’s chief marketing officer.

DataCore Software has expanded its software-defined storage capabilities with the acquisition of leading software-defined object storage technology developer.

With the acquisition, unveiled Tuesday, DataCore now offers software-defined block, file, and object storage, and will be working to integrate them all into a common platform, said Gerardo Dada, chief marketing officer for the Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.-based company.

DataCore started as a developer of software-defined block storage, and a couple of years introduced vFilo, the company’s software-defined file storage technology, Dada told CRN.

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The company now gets a market-leading object storage technology with Caringo, he said.

“Caringo embodies the value of software-defined for us: hardware abstraction, data services, and optimal data placement,” he said.

With Caringo, DataCore is getting essentially the entire company, Dada said. He declined to discuss the acquisition price.

The acquisition is an opportunity for both companies, he said. “Caringo wasn’t finding the success to match its technology,” he said. “It didn’t have resources to market the technology, and its customers were worried about the company.”

DataCore also gets Caringo’s entire customer base, Dada said.

“Larger customers need block, file, and object storage,” he said. “A lot of Caringo’s customers are in media and entertainment, high performance computing, and government. And we have customer overlap in the medical records business. We’re particularly interested in the cloud service provider business. The acquisition gives us the ability to offer all three storage technologies to partners with one business model and one support contract.”

DataCore has had as its vision the need to develop technology to meet a variety of storage requirements, starting with block-based and then file-based storage, Dada said.

“As customers moved towards object storage, we decided an acquisition would be the fastest way to get it,” he said. “Caringo had the most advanced technology, but was lacking the financial backing and the support of a strong channel. There are other object storage companies, but they don’t have the maturity the Caringo Swarm offers. Caringo Swarm is reliable, and super easy to manage, with such services as WORM (write once, read many), legal holds, and HIPAA compliance.”

The Caringo Swarm was also designed for performance from day one, with performance increasing as the scale of the deployment grows, Dada said.

Caringo is likely DataCore’s first acquisition, Dada said, although he is not clear about what might have happened in the early days of the 20-plus-year-old company.

However, last February, DataCore, along with its private equity owner Insight Partners, took part in a $26-million equity investment in MayaData, a developer of container-attached storage for Kubernetes. That investment gave DataCore and Insight Partners a minority stake in MayaData, includes transferring a team of DataCore container-focused engineers to become MayaData employees.