Storage That Powers Digital Business: Scality

The Silicon Review

“Delivering web-scale storage that has powered digital businesses since 2009.”

Scality was founded by a team of 5 repeat entrepreneurs who have tremendous experience in designing and operating large scale Internet Services. They recognized in 2008 that Service Providers were looking for a software that would allow them to provide storage services for their millions of end users, quite in the same way that Google and Facebook were already doing. Such software would need to leverage off the shelf x86 servers, ensure a real 24x7x365 availability, and be extremely cost effective. They started Scality on June 9th of 2009, to do just that.

In July 2010, the first version of the software, called Scality RING, was released and deployed at Telenet, the largest cable operator in Belgium, part of the LGI group. Telenet serves 2 million end users, and to this day, this installation has not seen even 1 second of down time. At that time, the company raises it first round of funding with Tier 1 VC in France. In the following two years, Scality developed its software, with support for Amazon’s popular S3 API, and a native file system. Scality is the very first vendor to have recognized the need for a scalable file system for object storage deployment. Scality wins contract with many of the top Telcos in the world. Today, Scality serves 7 of the 20 largest telecommunications operators worldwide.

In 2014, Scality wins many contracts in the Media & Entertainment industry, and is named worldwide leader in Object Storage by analyst firm IDC. The company is now generally acknowledged as a leader in its field, with over 116 customers serving over 500 million users worldwide.

Scality in the Market
Data is at the center of the digital transformation. The digital economy commands the storage of vast amount of data, which in turns demands a disruptive approach to storage infrastructure. Scality delivers web-scale storage that has powered digital businesses since 2009. The Scality RING, its software-defined storage, turns commodity x86 servers into an unlimited storage pool for any type of data –file and object– at petabyte scale.

The Power Storage
Scality provides a comprehensive solution for Petabyte-scale object and file storage, to enable digital businesses. Scality’s RING solution provides the highest-levels of data durability for long-term data storage, scalability from 100’s of Terabytes to Petabytes, and complete hardware freedom to enable customers to choose their optimal platform for their own application requirements. Customers use Scality to enable new revenue generating services, with a substantial TCO savings compared to traditional storage solutions.

The Client Dimension
The company targets Enterprises and Service Providers, building cloud environments for running internal or customer based mission critical workloads. In the Enterprise, it helps customers deploy private clouds across multiple data centers to run their internal business applications, as well as to provide scalable long-term storage for their backups and archive requirements. Service providers are using Scality’s technology to build services for their customers, including a wide range of PaaS and IaaS offerings.

Scality derives 50% of its revenue from Cloud Providers and 50% from large enterprise. More specifically:

Public Cloud

Consumer Services: Dailymotion, Comcast, Charter, Time Warner Cable, Softbank, Orange, Telstra
IaaS: Rackspace, OVH
Enterprise SaaS: NetDocuments, Daisy, IoT Cloud

Enterprise

Finance: Bank of America, SociétéGénérale, Natixis
Media and Entertainment: Deluxe, Eurosport, RTL, ComHem,
Government & Surveillance : Metro Police UK, US Intelligence, UK intelligence

“Everything worked as advertised. Scality helped us achieve our project goals by reducing our TCO.” -Dailymotion

“We are up to 1 PB and will be growing to 2 PB very soon. We have about 2 million customers on Scality RING. The biggest benefit that I see is actually decreasing the amount of raw storage you need.” -Andrei Gasheyev, Comcast

Meet the Executive Trio

Jerome Lecat, CEO: Jérôme is a serial entrepreneur and business angel with 20 years of internet infrastructure start-up experience. From 2003 to 2010, Jerome led Bizanga, the leading email MTA for service providers, which he founded with Olivier Lemarié, Marc Sheldon and Giorgio Regni. In 2001, Jerome became Chairman of the Board of Data Center Technology (DCT), a Belgium based start-up which developed a unique Content Addressable Storage (CAS) technology, especially for the backup market. After signing over 70 customers, DCT was sold to Veritas in 2005 with significant profit for its investors. In 1994, together with Olivier Dauchot and Olivier Lemarié, Jérôme founded Internet-Way, an ISP focused on the enterprise market. As CEO, he built the company from a garage start-up to the second largest ISP in France.

Giorgio Regni, CTO: Giorgio manages Scality’s development, research, and product management and is one of the co-founders. A veteran of open source and commercial development projects, Giorgio’s expertise ranges from leading the development of an open-source content management system to designing and implementing a POS system for restaurants used in over 5,000 restaurants in Europe. He specializes in high performance network and infrastructure software. Prior to Scality, Giorgio was VP of Engineering for Bizanga, where he started at the company’s inception as a lead developer

Erwan Menard, COO and President: Erwan manages all aspects of the company’s operations, in particular product development and engineering as well as customer facing activities, including sales, channels and global alliances, professional services and customer support. Erwan is a storage and telecommunications industry veteran, with a passion for operational excellence. From 2011 to 2013, he was Chief Operating Officer at DataDirect Networks (DDN), the largest privately-held storage company world-wide, where he achieved significant annual growth. Under his leadership, the DDN team entered new vertical markets, successfully launched DDN’s object storage product and redesigned the company’s customer experience, from demand generation through support. Prior to DDN, Erwan spent fifteen years in the telecom industry, most recently as Vice President and General Manager, leading HP’s Communications and Media Solutions group.