Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/19/exagrid_expanding_exec_count/

Exagrid hires former IBM exec, Hitachi bod to help flog disk grid tech

CEO: Public cloud OK for archiving data but not for backup

By Chris Mellor

Posted in Storage, 19th June 2013 07:38 GMT

Exagrid, a supplier of deduplicated disk grid systems, clearly isn't worried about its products, but it has added two new execs to help boost the business side of things.

Dana Prestigiacomo takes over the marketing veep brief from previous incumbent Bill Hobbib. Her previous employers include Thomson Reuters, IBM and CA Technologies.

In a canned statement, CEO Bill Andrews said: “She has led teams in developing cutting-edge marketing lead generation capabilities, metrics, partner programs, and complete company re-branding."

Shortly before Prestigiacomo took her post, Exagrid poached Richard Pearce from Hitachi Data Systems as VP for business development.

Pearce's function is a new one for Exagrid, and Bill Andrews popped up again to say: "ExaGrid has integrations with the leading data centre technologies around backup and recovery, and a number of strong partnerships with complementary technology vendors."

"Richard will play a key role in helping us expand those partnerships and in developing new relationships to bring the advantages of our solution to a broader market," Andrews added.

Exagrid says it is in "an exciting phase of growth and development as the company continues to expand both product offerings and global market reach." Its indefatigable CEO has written a 53-page book entitled Straight Talk About The Cloud for data backup and disaster recovery., intending to separate the hype from the reality.

One point he makes in the book is this:

Due to the limited bandwidth to and from the public cloud, the sheer volume of daily backup data, and the need to get all of the data back out of the cloud in the event of a primary site disaster, backups to the public cloud are significantly challenged. … The public cloud is fine for organisations with up to hundreds of gigabytes of primary storage, but it can’t meet the requirements for protecting terabytes of data.

In other words, he thinks the public cloud is okay for archiving data but not for backup when you need to backup much more than 500GB/week.

You can download a PDF version of the book here (requires registration). ®