British cloud and networking provider, Exponential-e, has launched S4, a low cost cloud storage infrastructure that is designed to support the requirements of next generation IT workloads. As part of Exponential-e’s customer-served first approach, S4 will be available at a price point that is 30 per cent lower than its competitors. Additionally, there are no other operational costs, such as I/O or egress charges, needed to support the platform.
“The cloud has essentially levelled the playing field for Britain’s businesses and provided organisations with the digital plumbing to scale operations and compete on a global stage,” explained Jonathan Bridges, Head of Cloud at Exponential-e. “However, as the application landscape continues to evolve, businesses need access to more efficient storage solutions that enable them to manage the hyperscale growth in data. Through S4, we are able to offer a low-cost cloud storage platform that is simple, secure, scalable and sovereign so that businesses can take advantage of the growth in disruptive technologies.”
Instead of breaking data into its individual components, Exponential-e’s S4 solution treats data as an object, which means that it can dramatically reduce the cost of storage. Using its superfast 100 GigE network, Exponential-e has deployed EMC’s Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) across all of its tier-3 UK based data centres to deliver its S4 solution. Through this approach, Exponential-e can ensure data is never transmitted over the public internet so it retains its geographic protection and sovereignty. Since all services are delivered down a single pipe, customers can access a scalable storage solution that supports unlimited workloads and applications as required.
The software defined object storage solution has been designed to support storage-intensive workloads such as archiving and backup, rich media content delivery, cloud and business applications for both physical and cloud infrastructure. It has also been optimised for emerging workloads including co-resident applications and big data. The platform enables organisations to provision and centrally manage storage of mass unstructured data across on-premise, physical or public and hybrid cloud environments. In turn, this enables organisations to have on-demand access to the storage and infrastructure that ensures they can concentrate on modernisising IT to support future demands and establish a competitive edge in their sector.
