The pioneer in hyper-converged infrastructure: Pivot3

Pivot3 was founded on the idea that today’s stack of servers, shared storage and networks could be converged to drive down complexity and cost while dramatically increasing scale-out performance.

In the early 2000s, Bill Galloway put his mind to solving the data storage problem, which was and in many ways still is characterized by inefficient capacity usage, poor fault tolerance, and high costs. He proceeded to develop Software Defined Storage before it even had a name. His employer at the time, a large legacy IT vendor, turned down the opportunity to license the radical new technology, failing to see the brilliance and potential of the technology he developed. Galloway proceeded to patent Scalar Erasure Coding, which was the heart of his SDS technology, and formed Pivot3 with a group of colleagues. But the struggle was just beginning. Scalar Erasure Coding was so different and disruptive to established IT that the young team eventually gave up trying to sell the technology and instead focused on acquiring actual users with a real product featuring: unprecedented useable storage capacity, high fault tolerance and significant cost- savings.

As the company grew, the minds behind Pivot3 poured profits into even more advanced research and development, obtaining patent after patent and creating technologies that were years ahead of their time. They allowed their customers to drive their development, finding solutions to different storage problems as they arose. Today, with CEO Ron Nash at the helm, Pivot3’s technologies still lead the industry in innovation and are poised to shape the future of the data center and IT.

It’s not just about technology anymor
IT is about more than just technology these days; it’s about business. As enterprises look for storage solutions that allow for affordable management of ever-increasing amounts of data, Pivot3’s Global Hyper-Convergence, which pools all resources within a cluster of appliances, offers excellent useable storage capacity resulting in a much lower price per terabyte than that of traditional storage vendors, or only locally hyper-converged systems. In addition, where businesses used to have to invest millions of dollars on storage and data protection, they now can implement a superior, easily scalable solution for much less.
“Our first clients were in the video surveillance industry, such as the gaming industry or public transport authorities due to the need to completely and securely record vast amounts of video data without breaking the bank. But Global HCI is of interest today in every field. Recently, we have begun to see a strong need to securely and inexpensively store mass amounts of data in Healthcare and Government. But every enterprise-level industry can benefit significantly from Pivot3’s Global HCI, which essentially creates a virtual SAN that also has computing power. For example, Global HCI powers advanced virtual desktops for high-value work in engineering. Global HCI also enables mobility and high security of data in mobile devices used by health care providers. Unlike other providers that secure data by making mere copies, we use Scalar Erasure Coding, a technology we patented. Our software platform, vSTAC OS, saves extraordinary amounts of storage space and ensures fault tolerance without relying on brute force data replication, giving high-order data protection that leaves almost all the storage space still available, providing clients with significant cost-savings,” says team Pivot3.

Shaping the future of Data Centre and IT
With a focus on revenue growth, increased visibility and more articulation around what Pivot3 does and its differentiators, the company is making its presence felt among a varied list of clients.

Headquartered in Texas, Pivot3 believes that its Texas roots influence the way it approaches R&D and how it does business. “We’re a hard-working, close-knit team of straight shooters who aren’t afraid of taking risks. Because Texas has the second largest technology workforce in the nation, we are lucky enough to have some of the best talent available right in our own backyard,” adds team Pivot3.

Client Testimonials
“We wanted to develop a simple, cost effective and scalable solution which responded to the needs of our customers” – Mike Press; Nottinghamshire Health Informatics Service
“My entire budget would’ve only covered the cost of the SAN needed for any other VDI solution, but we got the entire solution with Pivot3”- Chris Eastwood; The Doe Run Company

Knowing the Key Executives Ron Nash – Chairman & CEO
Bringing his wealth of technology expertise to lead Pivot3, Ron has driven growth when he led smaller companies like ExoLink (acquired by Alliance Data Systems), Advanced Telemarketing (now Aegis Global) and Rubicon (acquired by Cerner), as well as at larger information technology companies like Perot Systems (now Dell Services) and EDS (now HP Enterprise Services). More recently, he served as a partner at InterWest Partners, investing in successful breakthrough technology companies like Pivot3 and Lombardi Software (acquired by IBM). He holds a Master of Science degree in Management and Administrative Sciences from the University of Texas at Dallas, majoring in finance, as well as a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, majoring in information and control systems and has been recognized as a distinguished graduate by both universities for his business and volunteer activities.

Bill Galloway – Founder, Vice-President & CTO
A recognized thought leader in the storage industry, Bill is named on 40 storage related patents and has been actively involved in storage technologies and standards such as SAS, SATA, SCSI, Fibre Channel, and RAID. With over 30 years of product development experience in storage and I/O technology at both public and private companies, he co-founded BREA Technologies, Inc. and also worked worked for several years at Compaq Computer Corp. as a Principal Member of the Technical Staff, prior to Pivot3. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University.