Chances are that the computer you’re reading this post on contains a minimum of a 160GB hard drive. Like mine, it might be connected to a multi-TB backup device which, in turn, is connected to the cloud for online backup. Add to that all of the other computers and servers in our office and you can see that even a small firm like ours finds our needs for digital data storage is constantly outpacing whatever size drives or backup scheme we put in place for our network storage.
Pranah Storage Technologies, a company based in suburban Saint Paul, designs and manufactures data storage systems that “…bring simplicity and high efficiency to data-intensive environments in small to midsized businesses (SMBs)” and is a local company that should be on your radar.
Computer Reseller News (CRN), a trade rag I used to read faithfully when I was dealing with the reseller channel, has an offering called the “Everything Channel,” a sort of one-stop-shop online for I.T. value added resellers, system integrators and computer consulting groups. Because their readers look to them as seekers of the new and thought leaders when it comes to what they need strategically for their businesses and clients, the Everything Channel folks are always on the hunt for innovative and disruptive technologies.
Enter the Sprout Awards, a competition enabling them to discover all startups that fit within the innovative and disruptive category.
With the CRN judges obviously seeing Pranah as a company with an innovative and disruptive set of hardware and software technologies, the company was just selected as one of only eight winners and specifically as one of the best new startups in technology. The Sprout Awards spotlight companies that are in the earliest stages of promising technology and product development in a bunch of categories including Client Applications, Client Hardware, Server Applications, Server Hardware, Cloud Computing, Storage, Networking, Wireless, Mobility, Social Networking, Consumer Electronics, and more.
I must admit I’m a sucker for company names that actually mean something, like my client “Yugma“, a company name which is a Sanskrit word meaning “confluence, meeting or state of togetherness,” which is pretty appropriate for a company in the web conferencing space.
When I first learned about Pranah I went to their site and smiled when I read that “Pranah” is a Sanskrit word meaning “all-pervading vital energy” and that they called it that since an organization’s data is its “Pranah,” and the company’s storage systems are designed to protect that vital resource.
The Morgan Stanley slide above shows a projection of the petabytes of digital data storage being sold which, of course, is a direct correlation to the amount we’re all generating. If you’re like most businesses, the continued exponential increases in the digital data we’re spawning is not going to slow anytime soon. So it’s not just bigger hard drives that your small to midsize business needs but rather that and better tools to manage your network storage. Regardless of the size of your business, protecting your vital digital assets are mission-critical and you need solutions you can count on.
If you’d like to know more, poke around their website or give ’em a call 888-99-PRANAH.
(Note: My Minnov8 colleague Graeme Thickins is a consultant to Pranah, and is one happy guy that he insisted they apply for the Sprout Awards.)