Komprise Analysis offers standalone SaaS data visibility tools
Analytical capabilities of the data management vendor's flagship product are now available as a separate SaaS to help provide better visibility into enterprise data.
Komprise wants to take the management guesswork out of moving customer data without demanding a full commitment to its software suite.
Komprise Analysis, a new SaaS offering from the data management vendor, enables customers to collect information about their ever-growing data stores across the enterprise before migrations. Specific capabilities for Komprise Analysis include a set of pre-built reports based on common enterprise needs, as well as tools to speculate cost changes under new management rules and locate data bottlenecks in the storage infrastructure.
Storage vendors such as IBM, NetApp and Dell Technologies offer data visibility software, but it's typically limited to their specific hardware, noted Dave Raffo, an analyst at Evaluator Group in Boulder, Colo. Komprise, however, can provide visibility across both hardware and cloud storage without vendor lock-in.
"It works across all different vendors and cloud storage," Raffo said. "It's [capabilities] a vendor would have in their own storage, but Komprise does it across all [vendors]."
Analyze this
Komprise Analysis is a standalone SaaS product derived from the company's existing Elastic Data Migration and Intelligent Data Management products.
Similar companies providing storage visibility and migration capabilities include StrongBox Data Solutions, Data Dynamics and Aparavi, alongside specific hardware vendor and open source tools.
The SaaS, priced at $15,000 annually and available now, offers the Komprise suite's visibility capabilities only and doesn't enable customers to generate custom reports or insights. That functionality is available from Komprise, but would require the Deep Analytics Actions feature of the full suite.
Instead, Komprise Analysis acts as an on-ramp for customers to the benefits of its data management tools without the need to purchase the service outright, said Krishna Subramanian, president, chief operating officer and co-founder of Komprise.
Although unable to create custom reports, Komprise Analysis does offer common reporting information requests including showbacks, orphaned data locations, duplicated data and user audits. The service works with any file or object cloud storage as well as on-premises hardware using the Komprise Observer virtual appliance software.
"It always starts with analysis," Subramanian said. "[It's] key to giving them the insights to what they have. We know from experience this is what customers are trying to do with our analysis."
This new on-ramp arrives just a couple of months after the vendor closed a new round of funding totaling $37 million, bringing the company's total investment tally up to $85 million since its founding in 2014.
It's not in a cloud provider's best interest to tell you you're wasting storage space.
Steve McDowellAnalyst and founding partner, NAND Research
Just a taste
Subramanian said she expects more companies will need data visibility and management tools in the near future as the corporate demands of environmental, social and governance reporting begin to affect more IT departments.
Komprise Analysis is a way for enterprises to explore data migration and control options without committing to the full Komprise suite from the jump, said Steve McDowell, analyst and founding partner at NAND Research. Cloud storage in particular can accumulate excessive amounts of data prime for deletion or deduplication, he said.
"To put a cost on it, especially in a cloud-oriented world, that's valuable," McDowell said. "It's not in a cloud provider's best interest to tell you you're wasting storage space."
Storage administrators understand the headaches associated with siloed or orphaned data from experience, but reporting tools can help them make the case for purchasing migration and management tools such as Komprise, McDowell said.
"They sell a suite that touches all your data. That's probably a hard sell for enterprises," he said. "[This] demonstrates that value."
Tim McCarthy is a journalist living on the North Shore of Massachusetts. He covers cloud and data storage news.
