InformationWeek
Kurt Marko
For those looking for tighter integration between appliance and cloud service, CTERA offers several storage products sized for small and branch offices that work with its proprietary service portal. As Rani Osnat, CTERA’s VP of marketing, puts it, the portal software, which is typically deployed by software-as-a-service providers or ISPs, acts as middleware between data locally stored on a CTERA appliance, which otherwise looks like a standard NAS box, and cloud services. Files are automatically and securely (using AES for the data and SSL for transport) backed up to the cloud, and the product offers automatic data compression and deduplication, features not always found on entry-level products, to increase usable cloud capacity and reduce transport time. Another nice touch is the ability to do bare-metal system restores to Windows, Mac, and Linux hosts.