Bycast
Object-based storage software for petabyte-scale data archives.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| investor | €0.0 | round | |
N/A | Acquisition | ||
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
Bycast Inc. was a Canadian software company founded in 2000 by David Slik that specialized in object-based storage. The company developed advanced storage virtualization software, with its flagship product being StorageGRID. This platform was designed to manage massive, petabyte-scale, and globally distributed archives of fixed-content data such as images, videos, and records. Bycast's technology presented the storage system as a virtual file system, allowing data to be stored and retrieved without concern for its physical location.
StorageGRID provided a software layer that could virtualize and manage information across a wide spectrum of storage hardware from different vendors, creating a single, resilient pool of storage. The system was built to ensure data integrity, optimize the storage infrastructure, and offer features like multi-tenancy for service providers and enhanced auditing for chargeback models. Key markets for Bycast included digital media, Web 2.0, healthcare, and cloud service providers. The company had a significant presence in the medical imaging sector, with its software used to manage millions of studies globally. Bycast's business model included direct sales and OEM relationships with major vendors like HP and IBM.
In May 2010, NetApp acquired Bycast for an undisclosed amount, reported to be around $50 million. The acquisition was a strategic move for NetApp to enter the object storage market and enhance its unified storage strategy. Bycast's technology became the foundation for the NetApp StorageGRID product, which continues to be developed. Following the acquisition, Bycast's headquarters in Vancouver became a technology center for NetApp.
Keywords: object storage, storage virtualization, data archiving, petabyte-scale storage, unstructured data, digital media management, cloud storage software, medical imaging archive, data repository, content-addressable storage, policy-based management, StorageGRID, data integrity, geo-dispersed clusters, large-scale archives, fixed-content storage, enterprise data, multi-tenancy storage, digital asset preservation, storage infrastructure software