Storage Trailblazers 2020 – Shortlist



We have a bumper number of entries to the Tech Trailblazers Awards this year. 2020 has seen a considerable uptick since last year, an increase of over 50%, demonstrating that even more startups in the enterprise tech space are continuing to take positive steps to gain the recognition from awards in order to stand out from the crowd when it comes to seeking investment, clients, and potential acquirers.

The Storage Trailblazers is open to storage startups that offer innovative enterprise solutions to enterprises based anywhere around the world. The kind of topics that may be considered hot and innovative under storage include: Solid State Disk (SSD), backup, archiving, deduplication, Write Attenuation, Open Source, Storage Software, Storage Switches, Compression. However, any startup that considers itself innovating in storage can be considered.

Congratulations to this year’s shortlist for the Storage category:

  • Fungible – Revolutionizing the performance, economics, reliability and security of data centers at all scales around the world. Website Twitter LinkedIn
  • Lightbits Labs – Lightbits delivers scale-out, disaggregated, software-defined storage that performance like local flash. Website Twitter LinkedIn
  • MemVerge – At MemVerge, our mission is to open the door to Big Memory Computing via a new software stack to allow the applications to take full advantage of a new Optane SSD product. Website Twitter LinkedIn
  • VAST Data – Simplifying the data centre and redefining how organizations interact with data with its Universal Storage concept. Website Twitter LinkedIn
  • Wasabi Cloud Storage – Wasabi delivers fast, low-cost, and reliable cloud storage that is 1/5 the price of Amazon S3 and faster than the competition. Website Twitter LinkedIn

Storage Trailblazers success – the story so far

The Storage Trailblazers is one of the categories that has been a part of the Tech Trailblazers Awards since the very beginning in 2012. Since then there has been a steady stream of seven firms who have won or been shortlisted which have gone on to be acquired. Notably SolidFire who was bought by NetApp in 2015 for $870 million, having won the Storage category in 2014 after being a runner-up in 2012.

However, many deals are announced but keep the financial details secret. One firm, Hedvig, managed to be a runner-up over three separate years, 2015, 2016, and 2018, but successfully went on to be acquired by Commvault in 2019 for $225 million. Other runners-up that were snapped up include Avere Systems (Microsoft 2018), DataGravity (HyTrust 2017), and StorageOS (StorCentric 2019).

Smart Storage Systems was the first winner of the Storage Award and went on to be acquired the following year by SanDisk. Another winner, PernixData won in 2013 and went on to be a runner-up in the follow year’s Awards, to be picked up by Nutanix in 2016.

This all goes to show how not only winners but also those recognised by our esteemed judges can catch the eye of a larger firm who then buys them up, often the startup founder’s dream exit.

Now we’re onto the second round of judging and the voting stage of the Awards. The public vote is now open, vote here now! Voting closes on Thursday 3rd December and the winners will be announced on Tuesday 8th December.


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