Using Cloud Attached Storage For Backups
George Crump, Senior Analyst

Storage Switzerland continues its test drive of the CTERA Cloud Attached Storage appliance. We have had the unit in our labs for almost 4 months now and have found no significant issues with it. Now seems like the ideal time to test more of the system’s extensive feature set, this month focusing on agent backup.

Rani Osnat, vice president of marketing for CTERA Networks, adds that SMEs also need to accommodate for rapid growth. An SME’s key goals are security, accessibility, and implicity when it comes to NAS solutions. As the SME grows, so does the NAS that supports the organization, and managing that growth and making sure the data is always available to the organization is critical for success.

CTERA Named One of Five "Hot Storage Start-Ups"

As well as cloud and remote management, the CTERA appliance contains storage, making it a hybrid approach that sends remote data into the cloud for storage while at the same time keeping the most recent data in the appliance to provide the fastest possible recoveries. "Enterprise IT managers are likely to go for this in a big way because it allows them to provide the same level of protection to remote sites as they do to the data they keep the data center."

CTERA: How Cloud-based Object Storage Could Help Businesses

The solution CTERA proposes for business is a hardware-based appliance that mitigates the communications bottlenecks between the cloud portal at the data center, and the data pool at each branch level. "The user interacts with the appliance, and then the appliance interacts with the cloud," Osnat describes, "creating a transparent buffer between the user and the cloud, giving the user the feeling that he's working with a local device and not something that's 'out there.'"

Israeli Telco Bezeq Taps CTERA for Cloud Attached Storage

CTERA has a clear goal to support hybrid cloud environments. So when a telco with more than a million subscribers like Bezeq adopts the CTERA portal, the message is very clear: The company’s strategy is working.

Altimate: Cloud for Everyone with CTERA (in French)

Wanting to be "at the forefront of innovation", the VAD Altimate France is now offering its partners and their customers free trials of the CTERA solution for protecting critical data in the cloud.

CTERA sharpens its channel strategy for hybrid cloud storage (requires registration)
by Agatha Poon

The cloud storage gateway startup has sharpened its focus on the SMB market with the release of CTERA 3.0, which is touted to provide scalable options for channel partners that are challenged to meet diverse needs and performance requirements of end customers.

Cloud Storage On-Ramps: Gateway to the Hybrid Cloud
By Simon Robinson (requires a 451 Research account)

In mid-2010 Seneca formed a partnership with CTERA to add managed storage and data-protection services based on CTERA’s cloud storage gateway... Seneca says it was attracted to CTERA because it’s a straightforward and easy-to-implement offering, mainly because the gateway appliances offer plug-and-play functions that do a good job of masking complexity.

CTERA C400 - All-in-One Cloud Solution for Service Providers
Eric Slack, Senior Analyst

As a complete cloud-based data protection - with comprehensive backup and DR - it’s very appealing to smaller companies. And, when file services and collaboration features are added, it becomes even more appealing, to both users and MSPs. CTERA knows what service providers need in a cloud solution and have built the kind of management functionality into the C400 that makes it easy to sell, support and grow.

Value for Money Distinguishes CTERA as Champion in the Cloud Backup Market

"Info-Tech Research Group recommends CTERA’s solution for small to mid-sized businesses and branch offices. The vendor offers consumer-type sharing features at a reasonable price point and is a trusted cloud provider. CTERA received the highest value score in the Vendor Landscape and is ranked as a Champion."

CTERA Appliance Spotlights Cloud as an SMB DR Option

Nemertes Impact Analysis:

Privately held CTERA’s C800 storage appliance provides onsite storage with cloud backup as a viable Disaster Recovery (DR) option for SMBs. Ctera’s appliance delivers Network Attached Storage (NAS), file server and backup for local services and then synchronizes encrypted backup files with CTERA’s online service for DR.

CTERA Links Cloud Storage With Data Protection
Frank Ohlhorst

According to Raj Mehta, CEO of Infosys International, a Plainview, N.Y.-based solution provider, cloud storage solutions like CTERA’s are sorely needed. "Today’s cloud-based storage is far too expensive for most small businesses," he says. "The cost per gigabyte far exceeds the cost of on-site storage, yet small businesses need the advantages offered by offsite backup. CTERA’s approach combines the speed and economy of local storage with the viability of offsite data preservation, something that small businesses need today."

Pact Informatique signe avec CTERA
Pour une offre de sauvegarde local et cloud

PACT Informatique et CTERA Networks Ltd. signent un accord de distribution permettant à PACT Informatique d'intégrer dans son catalogue une offre de sauvegarde en ligne sur le Cloud.

CTERA Launches New High-Capacity Hybrid Cloud Gateway
by Dave Courbanou

CTERA’s C800 is a rack-mountable eight-bay appliance that is designed to be an “on-ramp” for SMBs needing cloud storage. In reality, it’s a hybrid appliance. The C800 can connect to a cloud backup server of your choice, but flick the right switches, and it’ll also be a NAS. The C800 has also been built with the channel in mind, and partners can choose to provide their own branded cloud services on the platform or connect the C800 to an existing data center.

New Hybrid Cloud Storage Appliances Attract Attention for Primary Data
by Carol Sliwa

A new wave of hybrid cloud storage appliances is attracting attention because the products take aim at the thorniest problems that cause IT shops to remain skittish about transferring their precious primary data to an off-site cloud storage provider over an unsecured public network.

Also known as cloud gateways, the physical and virtual appliances do more than simply provide support for proprietary APIs to cloud storage services. They also tackle worries that latency, network outages or dropped connections could suspend access to business-critical data, and address concerns about storing data securely in the cloud.

CTERA’s Cloud Attached Storage adds File Sharing to Cloud Backup

Eric Slack, Senior Analyst

"CTERA has taken an existing technology and improved it by adding functionality that leverages the hardware that’s already in place. A hybrid backup appliance is essentially a NAS box, so why not use it at such, and add some data services like snapshots and synchronization? In the SMB space they’re targeting, users are buying cloud backup already. Now they can also get cloud file services and collaboration in the same box, at the same time."

CTERA Networks looks to all-channel model for hybrid cloud storage offering

One of the newer cloud MSP players which looks to address these issues is CTERA Networks, a hybrid cloud storage and data protection vendor which emerged in 2008, with founders who had previously been at Check Point. The company is based in Israel, and their U.S. sales office is in Palo Alto. They offer a cloud-based solution for storage backup and recovery which combines the cloud with a physical on-premise appliance. And unlike most of their competitors in this space, they go to market entirely through the channel.