In what is poised to turn the face of data storage upside down, Pure Storage has just announced a massive investment in Cerabyte, a young company working on ceramic-based data storage technology. The partnership will likely further drive Cerabyte’s vision for developing sustainable, high-capacity storage solutions on the petabyte-to-exabyte scale.
Advancing Data Storage Technology
This investment is one stepping stone toward realizing Pure Storage’s ambition of revolutionizing enterprise storage. The company is already working on SSD modules with capacities of 1,200TB, but Pure Storage—known for high-capacity SSD modules—sees the ceramic storage technology of Cerabyte as a complementary offering. Cerabyte pioneered a process through which data can be embedded into ceramic slabs in QR code-like patterns using femtosecond laser pulses, promising data retention for over 5,000 years without degradation.
Sustainable and Immutable Storage Solutions
Cerabyte’s technology solves the critical problem in the domain of integrity, removing bit-rot and silent data corruption that imperils the integrity of data over time. This becomes especially very critical at a time when artificial intelligence and large data sets are rapidly growing. Ceramic storage technology allows for an immutable record of data, making it quite perfect for long-term storage requirements.
John (Coz) Colgrove, Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Pure Storage, addressed the importance of this relationship: “Pure’s investment in Cerabyte and our joint partnership allow us to provide customers with sustainable and immutable solutions for data storage that are changing the face of the industry,” he said. “In disrupting archival storage, we are leading on the path forward to long-term storage which is more enduring and easier to manage.
On the road to the Yottabyte Era
According to Cerabyte’s CEO, Christian Pflaum, such development takes on a special meaning when this industry is approaching the Yottabyte Era. “Sustainable data storage that does not require data migration, thereby scaling down the energy footprint and total cost of ownership, will be critical to harnessing the data tsunami ahead,” said Pflaum. He was excited about the prospect of teaming up with Pure Storage for the chance to introduce a new ceramic-based data storage solution to the market. This includes extending a warm welcome to John Colgrove as he joins Cerabyte’s Board of Directors.
The New Generation of Data Storage
The Pure Storage-Cerabyte partnership is one of those moments in the development of data storage technologies. Pure Storage, one of the top SSD high-capacity developers, and Cerabyte, with its breakthrough ceramic storage technology, combine to set the new line in data retention, sustainability, and scalability—no doubt pushing the industry further down the path to store data more efficiently, securely, and sustainably than ever.