The 2020 Storage Awards night took place - entirely online, thanks to the pandemic - in late November, and the full list of winners and runners-up is right here
What a strange year 2020 has been - but after the recent launch of various COVID-19 vaccines here and abroad we can certainly begin to look forward with some positivity at last.
One high note in an otherwise undeniably depressing year was that we delivered, against the odds, a hugely successful Storage Awards ceremony in November, albeit in entirely virtual form. We hope you were able to join us for the winners and runners-up being announced on the night, but if not you can re-watch the entire ceremony now on YouTube - see the awards homepage URL below. The full list of winners and runners-up is reproduced across the following pages, alongside comments from our winners.
Storage magazine Editor David Tyler was host for the ceremony and commented: "I have to say it was very strange announcing the results via webcam with co-host, cricketing legend Chris Cowdrey - but the feedback we've had suggests that viewers enjoyed the night - especially our 'blast from the past' video clips from previous years' ceremonies! Here's to a return to normality in time for next year's Storries."
Big winners on the night included IBM, Veeam and Seagate, while DataCore and Infortrend each won coveted Editor's Choice awards. The Storage Solution of the Year award, which recognises success stories that show innovation in the sector, was this year awarded to South Wales firm Insurgo for its work at Cardiff University. A huge thanks go out again to all the awards' sponsors of course, and here's hoping that next year we will be able to do it all in person once again.
More info: www.storage-awards.com
Storage Magazine 'Hall of Fame' WINNER: CMS Distribution "We're absolutely thrilled to be awarded Storage Distributor of the Year at this year's Storage Awards, and to be included in the illustrious Hall of Fame is a phenomenal honour. The CMS team are relentless in the pursuit of customer success and strive to consistently exceed expectations when bringing storage products and solutions to the market. This is a fantastic accolade and a true testament to our commitment to the channel."
Storage Innovation of the Year - sponsored by Spinnakar WINNER: SpectraLogic - StorCycle Spectra Logic's StorCycle software offers modern storage lifecycle management by identifying, migrating, accessing and preserving large data sets for the entire lifespan of that data - be it short-term or forever. StorCycle identifies inactive data on expensive primary storage and transparently migrates it to any combination of cloud storage, object storage disk, network-attached storage (NAS) and object storage tape. StorCycle can automatically make additional copies of data for disaster recovery, including air-gapped copies on tape that protect data from ransomware. Implement StorCycle as standalone software using public cloud or existing network-attached storage, or combined with Spectra storage hardware. Learn more at spectralogic.com/products/storcycle/
One to Watch - Company WINNER: Spinnakar "Spinnakar are very proud to be awarded the 'One to Watch' distributor in this year's Storage awards. We would like to thank everyone who voted for Spinnakar. During an extremely strange year for us all, we have managed to grow our business exponentially and have partnered with some of the fastest growing and relevant products in the market today. Having seen the growth within our Infrastructure and Cloud business, we are now scaling our Security division. A big thank to all our vendors and through these strong partnerships developed, we are looking forward to an exciting year ahead."
Virtual Event of the Year WINNER: DataCore - SDS Experts Partner Conference "DataCore were thrilled to receive Editor's Choice - Product of the Year for their new vFilO solution. Launched at the beginning of the year, vFilO represents DataCore's first solution that sits outside of Block storage and into the world of File and Object storage. Using the solution, customers solve the needle in a haystack conundrum for their unstructured data and files previously scattered over diverse NAS devices, file servers and object stores. DataCore also scooped the best 'Virtual Event of 2020' with their SDS Experts Conference and Exhibition, that gathered 14 SDS alliance partners and speakers together under one virtual roof in July."
Storage Marketing Team of the Year - sponsored by ITMP WINNER: Seagate "Seagate are proud to have won the Storage Product of the Year Award. Seagate Technology crafts the datasphere, helping to maximise humanity's potential by innovating world-class, precision-engineered data management solutions with a focus on sustainable partnerships. We appreciate the support of the channel partners, users, vendors and everyone else who make these recognitions possible. Thank you to everyone who voted and who have made it possible for the Seagate Marketing team to receive this recognition. Congratulations to the EMEA Channel Marketing Team and also to the wider cross functional teams; with whose support our business goes from strength to strength. Our truly collaborative Marketing team will continue to support Seagate's vision and aspirations towards crafting the datasphere."
Contribution to the Storage Industry WINNER: Christo Conidaris of Curvature "I am delighted and humbled to receive this year's award in recognition of my contribution to the storage industry. This award is a testament to the work of my colleagues, past, present and future, who have been and will be with me on this amazing journey. This award is significant and special to me as it is voted by fellow industry peers, in the industry I love. Thank you to everyone who voted for me in this award category." - Christo Conidaris
Channel Excellence Award - sponsored by Q Associates WINNER: David Treadwell of Titan Data Solutions "Another year and another win! This year saw David Treadwell, our Solutions Director, pick up the Channel Excellence Award. Obviously a big thank you to everyone who voted for him and it is undoubtedly fully deserved. As our Solutions Director, David has primary responsibility for our product and vendor portfolio, thus creating best fit solutions to address today's data storage and management challenges. In addition, he has developed the Titan Academy, a structured programme designed to ensure that every customer facing member of the Titan team is up to date with the latest industry developments. Well done David."
Ransomware Protection Company of the Year WINNER: StorageCraft "We are delighted to have won the Ransomware Protection Company of the Year award for our Ransomware Recovery Solutions Suite from Storage Magazine’s readers. Unfortunately, ransomware attacks continue to compromise organisations, despite the deployment of state-of-the-art prevention solutions. For example, 77% of organisations infected with ransomware were running up-to-date endpoint protection. Also ransomwares may lay dormant for weeks and may even delete backups prior to the attack, leaving companies without a way to recover the data. We equip our customers and partners with modular, flexible, and future-proof data protection and management solutions. When prevention fails, StorageCraft protects your data!"
SMB Data Protection Company of the Year WINNER: Altaro Altaro develops award-winning backup solutions for managed service providers (MSPs), IT resellers and companies. With 50,000+ customers in 121+ countries, 10,000 partners and 2,000+ MSPs, Altaro provides affordable, easy-to-use, enterprise-class functionality coupled with outstanding 24/7 support. Altaro is a one-stop-shop for backup and recovery, providing solutions for Hyper-V and VMware virtual environments; Microsoft Office 365 mailboxes, OneDrive and SharePoint; roaming and on-premise endpoints such as desktops and laptops; and physical Windows servers. Altaro also offers monthly subscription programs for MSPs, through which MSPs can manage all their different types of backups from one central multi-tenant console, across all their customers.
Enterprise Data Protection Company of the Year WINNER: VEEAM "We make sure data is always available, protected and actively working for businesses across the globe. This means, regardless of where your data resides – physical systems, SaaS services, public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, or multi-cloud – our platform helps hundreds of thousands of companies keep their businesses running. We continue to charge forward to innovate the industry and deliver simple, flexible and reliable solutions to our 400,000+ customers."
Enterprise Backup Hardware Vendor of the Year WINNER: Exagrid "ExaGrid continues to innovate and build out product features that resolve the issues that customers often face with backup storage. This year, we released the Retention Time-Lock for Ransomware Recovery Feature in our software version 6.0, becoming the only solution to offer a delayed delete ransomware recovery strategy from backup storage. The new software version also added improvements to the user interface and enhanced deduplication and replication performance with different backup applications. ExaGrid is determined to change the economics of backup by eliminating product obsolescence and expensive forklift upgrades, and ensuring our system is cost-effective up front with savings from deduplication without impact on performance, and cost-effective over time as data grows with our scale-out architecture." - Bill Andrews, President and CEO of ExaGrid
Storage Innovators of the Year - sponsored by Storpool WINNER: Boston "During these strange times, it is fantastic for the hardworking team at Boston to be recognised as Storage Innovators of the Year! At Boston this year, we've onboarded leading vendors such as Panasas and DDN to expand our storage portfolio and made their technologies available for testing remotely to our customers, at no charge, via Boston Labs. With over £1m of the latest technologies in the labs at any time, we're able to offer access to anything from the latest NVIDIA A100 DGX in a cluster to the latest compact 1U 20x NVMe ideal for SDS." For more information, visit boston.co.uk
Data Management Vendor of the Year WINNER: NetApp "Digital data is the lifeblood of business. It is everywhere and increasing by the minute - in the cloud and on premises, driven by new usage patterns and delivery models. Businesses depend on this information to survive. But, more importantly, data is a unique resource that can truly unlock a company's potential. We talk with many organisations about building their data fabric to help them manage data as a single, connected experience, which allows them to optimise performance, adapt quickly, and constantly transform. Being recognised by our customers and partners as Data Management Vendor or the Year at this year's Storage Awards is a great confirmation of our strategy to help customers lead with data." - Chris Greenwood, UK&I Managing Director, NetApp.
Object Storage Vendor of the Year WINNER: IBM Consolidate data from edge to cloud with object storage: IBM Cloud Object Storage provides an industry-leading software-defined hyperscale and cost-effective storage solution for data on the edge, the core data center or the private or public cloud. IBM solution is used by customers across the globe for modernising their infrastructure for AI, analytics, IoT, video and image repositories and cloud storage for service providers and secondary storage for the enterprise. With recent enhancements customers can lower storage costs and protect their data with our local or geo-dispersed data protection that can be customised for demanding data lakes and large capacity requirements.
Hyper-convergence Vendor of the Year WINNER: StorMagic "We are delighted to have been named Hyper-convergence Vendor of the Year. Thank you to everyone who voted for us. StorMagic simplifies the process of building hyper-converged clusters for organizations with one to thousands of locations. Our product, SvSAN, is designed specifically for small and large enterprises with distributed IT that require highly available compute and storage at the lowest possible cost. Underpinned by simplicity, cost-effectiveness and flexibility, StorMagic SvSAN removes the need for a physical SAN in some of the world's most demanding environments by converting the disk, flash and memory of two servers into a virtual SAN."
Hybrid Storage Vendor of the Year WINNER: IBM IBM Hybrid cloud storage solutions help clients create an infrastructure-independent storage environment for hybrid cloud. IBM is accomplishing this through orchestration integration with cloud operating environments through APIs like the new Container Storage Interface for Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift. IBM is also deepening integration with VMware3. IBM Storage Insights provides a consistent, AI-infused management experience and IBM Spectrum Virtualize provides a consistent set of storage capabilities and data mobility both on premises and in the public cloud regardless of your choice in hardware suppliers. And IBM Storage cloud-like pricing provides a consumption-based financial option for your on-premises storage infrastructure to mirror that of public cloud storage.
"As a Service" Platform of the Year WINNER: NexProtect from Nexstor "Nexstor's NexProtect offering is unique, but it is such a thrill for our innovation to be recognised by the industry with this award for the second year running. Nexprotect provides dedicated hardware both on-site and at our data centre, which allows us to offer clients the speed and security they need to realise the true potential of their data while also keeping it safe from innumerable threats. Nexstor's first-class team is exceptionally dedicated to delivering the benefits of this new platform to our clients."
Flash/SSD Storage Vendor of the Year WINNER: Pure Storage "Pure Storage is delighted to have won both 'Flash/SSD Storage Vendor of the Year' and 'Channel Partner Program of the Year' at the 2020 Storage Awards. We're especially proud of this double win as it was voted for by end users. Pure is 100% partner centric and always puts partners first, which is reflected by this win. In addition, our customer-first philosophy is at the heart of everything we do, and we will continue to focus on helping our customers leverage their most important asset, their data."
Cloud Enabler of the Year WINNER: NetApp "2020 has forced organisations large and small to turbocharge their digital transformation efforts as they adapted to new realities, often turning to the cloud to answer the challenge of COVID-induced disruption. At NetApp we are a cloud led, data centric company, working closely with the world's leading public cloud providers like Microsoft, Amazon Web Services or Google, and delivering a comprehensive portfolio of software-based solutions to help organisations transform and unlock the best of cloud. The recognition by our customers and partner community in winning the Storage Awards Cloud Enabler of the Year is a great testament to the vision of NetApp and to the hard work and dedication by our team." - Chris Greenwood, UK&I Managing Director, NetApp.
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Vendor of the Year WINNER: Storpool "StorPool's team is proud to be awarded as a Software-Defined Storage (SDS) Vendor of the Year in 2020. This award comes as a recognition for our long-term commitment to deliver best-of-breed new-age storage solution to the market, powered by innovation and backed up with exceptional customer care. We are grateful to our customers, partners and team for the trust in us! StorPool's plans for the future are to continue to grow and gain positions in the global market by building the name of our brand and team." - Boyan Ivanov, CEO, StorPool
Storage Performance Optimisation Company of the Year WINNER: ExaGrid "ExaGrid continues to innovate and build out product features that resolve the issues that customers often face with backup storage. This year, we released the Retention Time-Lock for Ransomware Recovery Feature in our software version 6.0, becoming the only solution to offer a delayed delete ransomware recovery strategy from backup storage. The new software version also added improvements to the user interface and enhanced deduplication and replication performance with different backup applications. ExaGrid is determined to change the economics of backup by eliminating product obsolescence and expensive forklift upgrades, and ensuring our system is cost-effective up front with savings from deduplication without impact on performance, and cost-effective over time as data grows with our scale-out architecture." - Bill Andrews, President and CEO of ExaGrid
Capacity Storage Vendor of the Year - sponsored by Insurgo WINNER: Synology "We at Synology are absolutely thrilled to accept the award of ‘Capacity Storage Vendor Of The Year’. Year on year we strive for excellence and the proof is in our products. We are committed to transforming the way businesses manage their data – elegantly simple, secure, and reliable. Data is at the heart of every industry's transformation, and this is where Synology has a profoundly important role to play. At its very core, our mission is to manage and protect the world’s data. Synology uniquely enables every business to manage, secure, and protect their data wherever access is needed from flash to disk to multiple cloud architectures – at the scale needed to accommodate the exponential data growth of the digital world."
Channel Partner Program of the Year WINNER: Pure Storage - P3 Partner Program "Pure Storage is delighted to have won both 'Flash/SSD Storage Vendor of the Year' and 'Channel Partner Program of the Year' at the 2020 Storage Awards. We're especially proud of this double win as it was voted for by end users. Pure is 100% partner centric and always puts partners first, which is reflected by this win. In addition, our customer-first philosophy is at the heart of everything we do, and we will continue to focus on helping our customers leverage their most important asset, their data."
Third Party Maintenance Company of the Year WINNER: Park Place Technologies "Park Place Technologies is delighted to be recognised as the leading third-party maintenance provider with this Storage Award for Third Party Maintenance Company of the Year! It is an honour to receive this award, because we are being recognised for our core service - maintenance, to ensure our customers retain uptime of their IT systems. This recognition means so much to us; thank you to everyone who voted for Park Place Technologies in this award category." - Simon Bitton, Park Place Technologies
Security Storage Reseller of the Year WINNER: NGS "As we draw to the end of the year, many will be glad to see the back of 2020. It has certainly been a year quite unlike any other, and it has been very tough for most of us. Life has changed dramatically, both on a business and a personal front. Despite the uncertainty and changes that have had to have been made, we managed to continue to deliver great service to our customers. We were rewarded for all our efforts at the Storage Awards and overjoyed with Epaton winning 'Specialist Storage Reseller of the Year' for the fifth consecutive year, and NGS winning 'Security Storage Reseller of the Year'. We would like to thank everyone in our team for delivering the goods, and to our wonderful customers and partners and to all that voted for us, for the continued support throughout these challenging times. From us all at Epaton and NGS we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!"
Specialist Storage Reseller of the Year - sponsored by Seagate WINNER: Epaton "As we draw to the end of the year, many will be glad to see the back of 2020. It has certainly been a year quite unlike any other, and it has been very tough for most of us. Life has changed dramatically, both on a business and a personal front. Despite the uncertainty and changes that have had to have been made, we managed to continue to deliver great service to our customers. We were rewarded for all our efforts at the Storage Awards and overjoyed with Epaton winning 'Specialist Storage Reseller of the Year' for the fifth consecutive year, and NGS winning 'Security Storage Reseller of the Year'. We would like to thank everyone in our team for delivering the goods, and to our wonderful customers and partners and to all that voted for us, for the continued support throughout these challenging times. From us all at Epaton and NGS we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!"
Corporate Storage Reseller of the Year WINNER: Q Associates "Q Associates is delighted to be named Corporate Storage Reseller of the Year at the UK Storage Awards 2020. Voted for by our customers and suppliers, this result is a clear endorsement of our outstanding work as an independent provider of specialist IT services," said Business Development Director, Andrew Griffiths. "As the winner of this key accolade for the second year in succession, we'd like to thank everyone who supported our nomination with votes."
Storage Distributor of the Year WINNER: CMS Distribution "We're absolutely thrilled to be awarded Storage Distributor of the Year at this year's Storage Awards, and to be included in the illustrious Hall of Fame is a phenomenal honour. The CMS team are relentless in the pursuit of customer success and strive to consistently exceed expectations when bringing storage products and solutions to the market. This is a fantastic accolade and a true testament to our commitment to the channel."
Storage Solution of the Year WINNER: Insurgo - Cardiff University "Winning this award is a tremendous honour and testament to the entire workforce at Insurgo, especially our research and development team. Their continued hard work, commitment and dedication to producing innovative products and services and their hunger to strive for excellence has allowed us to strengthen our position as the experts in our industry. Over the last 12 months, Investigo has been deployed at sites globally and with further improvements and new services planned on this software; this only strives to get stronger". - Gavin Griffiths, Managing Director, Insurgo
Editor's Choice: Product - sponsored by Stormagic WINNER: DataCore - vFilO "DataCore were thrilled to receive Editor's Choice - Product of the Year for their new vFilO solution. Launched at the beginning of the year, vFilO represents DataCore's first solution that sits outside of Block storage and into the world of File and Object storage. Using the solution, customers solve the needle in a haystack conundrum for their unstructured data and files previously scattered over diverse NAS devices, file servers and object stores. DataCore also scooped the best 'Virtual Event of 2020' with their SDS Experts Conference and Exhibition, that gathered 14 SDS alliance partners and speakers together under one virtual roof in July."
Editor's Choice: Company - sponsored by StorageCraft WINNER: Infortrend "Firstly, congratulations to the Storage Awards for not letting the global pandemic stop them holding their annual ceremony. Secondly, a huge thank you to all who voted for our Company and Products. It's a massive honour for us to be walking away with not one, but two awards for the second year running. To win Cloud Product of the Year for our EonStor GS Gen2 is great achievement for us in what's becoming a crowded market. We pride ourselves on extensive R&D and the quality of our products so this is testament to that philosophy. To also take away the Editor's Choice Award proves that in the toughest of circumstances, our EU operations have remained resilient, defiant, and very much active within the market. Thanks again, and hopefully we'll see you next year."
Cloud Product of the Year WINNER: Infortrend - EonStor GS Gen2 "Firstly, congratulations to the Storage Awards for not letting the global pandemic stop them holding their annual ceremony. Secondly, a huge thank you to all who voted for our Company and Products. It's a massive honour for us to be walking away with not one, but two awards for the second year running. To win Cloud Product of the Year for our EonStor GS Gen2 is great achievement for us in what's becoming a crowded market. We pride ourselves on extensive R&D and the quality of our products so this is testament to that philosophy. To also take away the Editor's Choice Award proves that in the toughest of circumstances, our EU operations have remained resilient, defiant, and very much active within the market. Thanks again, and hopefully we'll see you next year."
Storage Product of the Year - sponsored by CMS Distribution WINNER: Seagate - EXOS E 4U106 "Seagate are proud to have won the Storage Product of the Year Award. Seagate Technology crafts the datasphere, helping to maximise humanity's potential by innovating world-class, precision-engineered data management solutions with a focus on sustainable partnerships. We appreciate the support of the channel partners, users, vendors and everyone else who make these recognitions possible. Thank you to everyone who voted and who have made it possible for the Seagate Marketing team to receive this recognition. Congratulations to the EMEA Channel Marketing Team and also to the wider cross functional teams; with whose support our business goes from strength to strength. Our truly collaborative Marketing team will continue to support Seagate's vision and aspirations towards crafting the datasphere."
Cloud Company of the Year - sponsored by Datacore WINNER: IBM With the IBM Storage Suite for Cloud Paks, realise a faster, more reliable way to modernise and move to the cloud-a software-defined, enterprise-ready data services platform and foundation for your Kubernetes managed OpenShift private cloud platform. IBM Storage Suite for Cloud Paks consists of Red Hat OpenSource storage titles; Red Hat Ceph and OpenShift Container Storage; and IBM Spectrum Discover, Spectrum Scale, Spectrum Virtualize, and Cloud Object Storage. Enable your private cloud admins and users to buy what you need when you need it. Mix and match data service capacities, as business dictates, between block, file and object for your private cloud environment.
Storage Company of the Year WINNER: VEEAM "We make sure data is always available, protected and actively working for businesses across the globe. This means, regardless of where your data resides – physical systems, SaaS services, public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, or multi-cloud – our platform helps hundreds of thousands of companies keep their businesses running. We continue to charge forward to innovate the industry and deliver simple, flexible and reliable solutions to our 400,000+ customers."