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Like we humans, every application, every text message, every email, every photo—everything that’s digital—needs a home. Without secure data storage, the digital and online worlds simply cannot exist.
In all enterprise verticals, secure-yet-accessible data storage is crucial for employees, contractors, business partners, channel partners and a whole ecosystem of vendors. This is all about providing the correct information on demand while at the same time maintaining data privacy for users at all levels. These requirements are the same for physical data center storage and for storage in a cloud service.
Here are eWEEK’s top companies in this sector, with an accreditation based on a combination of revenue, global marketshare, overall collections of services and reputation. Resources include eWEEK’s own library plus input from analysts at Garter Research, IDC, 451 Research, ASG, Forrester Research and MarketsandMarkets. These are in no particular order.
Amazon Web Services
Headquarters: Seattle, Wash.
Solutions: Cloud storage plus numerous optional services and support
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is No. 1 across the board in all cloud storage categories, holding nearly one-third (32 percent) of the total global market. In fact, it has been No. 1 for more than a dozen years, since it launched Elastic Cloud 2 and Simple Storage Service in 2006. In health care, AWS focuses on helping providers deliver efficient, quality care to patients by reducing the time needed to run existing workloads and providing access to useful analytics capabilities. AWS also prioritizes meeting all security and privacy requirements and gives providers access to archiving solutions and allows hospitals to store backup servers in the cloud to save space. AWS manages more than 1,800 security controls and grants providers access to the right resources through technology and consulting partners useful for a variety of applications. AWS also collaborates with other cloud vendors, including VMware, to offer organizations options for public and private cloud deployments.
Read user reviews of Amazon Web Services
Microsoft Azure
Headquarters: Seattle, Wash.
Solutions: Cloud storage, numerous optional services, analytics and support
Microsoft Azure is one of the most widely used cloud providers among both large and medium-sized enterprises. The collection of integrated cloud services offers organizations solutions ranging from the internet of things (IoT) to big data and analytics. Microsoft Azure equips providers with the necessary tools to engage users, to empower teams and to optimize operational effectiveness.
Read user reviews of Microsoft Azure
Dell EMC Virtustream Enterprise Cloud
Headquarters: Round Rock, Texas
Solutions: Cloud storage plus numerous optional services and support
Dell EMC, the world’s No. 1 seller of enterprise storage hardware (arrays, servers and other components), also offers a Secure Cloud with HIPAA-compliant security and disaster recovery through its Virtustream hybrid-cloud service. The cloud provider hosts applications and assists users in building a private cloud or integrating Dell’s myriad solutions into their existing infrastructure. Dell is focused on building users a secure cloud or data center equipped with administrative, physical and technical controls to fulfill the requirements of data management. Offering a range of features such as a logically partitioned network, computer and storage layers, single sign-on and secure messaging, Dell EMC has a consistent record of matching user needs with secure solutions.
Get an in-depth look at Virtustream
Read user reviews of Virtustream
Google Cloud Platform
Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
Solutions: Cloud storage plus developer-oriented optional services and support
Google Cloud Platform offers evolving infrastructure with big data and analytics capabilities through a focus on developing code over configuring servers. Google Cloud Platform strives to meet stringent security and compliance controls, including HIPAA, so health care organizations can trust their infrastructure meets all relevant regulations. The cloud provider offers a variety of products, including cloud storage and databases, cloud virtual networks and a cloud machine learning engine.
Read user reviews of Google Cloud Platform
IBM
Headquarters: Armonk, N.Y.
Solutions: Cloud storage plus numerous optional services and support
IBM supplies organizations with the necessary tools and technology to deliver quality cloud service with apps and services integrated with cognitive and analytics capabilities for valuable insights. IBM offers a variety of secure, scalable, private cloud options available in more than 45 data centers worldwide. The cloud platform integrates DevOps tools to accelerate the development and delivery of web and mobile services. To help providers with the inundation of business data they deal with each day, IBM provides services—including the IoT—to promote fast and secure data transfer for various types of workloads.
Read user reviews of IBM
NetApp
Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.
Solutions: Enterprise storage hardware and software
NetApp is a survivor among storage—in fact, all—tech companies, having opened its doors in 1992. Once considered a “good little file-server company,” NetApp has long become an international player by creating storage and data management solutions designed to help customers accelerate their businesses and achieve cost efficiency. Throughout the world, leading organizations count on NetApp for software, systems and services to manage and store their data. They help enterprises and service providers envision, deploy and evolve their IT environments. Customers also benefit from their open collaboration with other technology leaders to create the specific solutions they need.
Read user reviews of NetApp
Veritas
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Solutions: Cloud storage infrastructure, optional services, support
Veritas went private in 2015 and separated from Symantec following a rocky 10-year relationship with the data security provider, and it’s turned out to be a good thing. Founded in 1983 by Eli Alon and Dale Shipley (both from Intel) and Stanford professor and entrepreneur Mark Leslie as Tolerant Systems, Veritas first provided data backup and recovery. After the merger with Symantec, it increased its development in data management, both on-premises and in cloud services. Veritas’ revenue was $5.3 billion in 2017. It has a loyal global clientele of about 50,000 customers.
Read user reviews of Veritas
Hitachi Vantara
Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.
Solutions: Cloud storage infrastructure, software
Hitachi Vantara, born in September 2017 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the global Hitachi Ltd., is starting to assert its own storage-business personality. The corporate move combined Hitachi Data Systems with Pentaho and the Hitachi Insights Group to form a subsidiary focused on data integration, IoT, big data analytics and enterprise storage. HDS storage systems live on in the form of the company’s Hitachi NAS Platform and G Series arrays. This is way more than just an organizational update. Hitachi Vantara is a essentially a new company resulting from the convergence of Hitachi Data Systems, Hitachi Insight Group and Pentaho. The new entity combines Hitachi’s 107-year experience in operational technology with 59 years of IT expertise, providing data management for business insight.
Read user reviews of Hitachi Vantara
Rackspace
Headquarters: Windcrest, Texas
Solutions: Managed cloud storage services
Rackspace, soon partnering with Google, specializes in managing the world’s leading clouds, with technical and professional certifications to manage a variety of cloud providers including AWS. One of Rackspace’s premiere features is Openstack—a way for users to manage containerized, virtualized and bare metal applications across public, private and hybrid clouds using a single standard set of APIs.
Read user reviews of Rackspace
Iron Mountain
Headquarters: Boston, Mass.
Solutions: Cloud plus physical storage
If it weren’t for IBM, founded in 1916, Iron Mountain (started in 1951) would be the granddaddy of IT storage. Iron Mountain’s information management solutions specialize in records management, information destruction and data backup and recovery. Iron Mountain’s scalable portfolio of IT management solutions focuses on accelerating user transitions and reducing their hybrid period. The cloud provider helps manage business solutions for more than 230,000 enterprise customers in 50-plus countries on five continents. It meets all EU and U.S. security compliance requirements and is able to store data and other files in offsite underground data centers.
Read user reviews of Iron Mountain
Vendor Overview
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