SoftIron launched in 2012 with a storage appliance and has now evolved its technology to offer what it calls an out-of-the-box cloud for on-premises and the edge, named SoftIron HyperCloud. The company embraces proprietary hardware which goes against the hardware commoditization trend in IT today, which makes it unusual, but the company argues this is what makes it able to have standout low energy consumption and flexible modularity.

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Summary

SoftIron embraces proprietary hardware, which goes against the hardware commoditization trend in IT today, which makes it unusual. Still, the company argues this makes it able to have standout low-energy consumption and flexible modularity. The company launched in 2012 with a storage appliance and has now evolved its technology to offer an out-of-the-box cloud for on-premises and the edge, named SoftIron HyperCloud. SoftIron clarifies that to create a meaningful cloud, you need at least eight HyperCloud nodes, and these can expand to hundreds and even thousands, all integrated on the same fabric.

HyperCloud: Stripped down hardware and putting the smarts in the network

SoftIron originally offered software-defined storage (SDS) appliances, although, by Omdia’s definition of the term, we would describe it as a storage appliance, given the proprietary nature of the hardware. Going against IT trends and embracing proprietary hardware, SoftIron designs all its hardware from the ground up, owns its manufacturing, has a global footprint, and writes its systems software. SoftIron claims commodity hardware can be overprovisioned, leading to inefficiencies, whereas it strips out components that are not needed. Moreover, it puts the plumbing intelligence in the network so that its storage and compute boxes are stateless and can easily scale out with minimal configuration.