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Founded in 1998, DataDirect Networks (DDN) is a provider of large storage systems for unstructured data and big data environments. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, USA, has about 650 employees, and in 2011 called itself the largest privately held information storage company.
Contents
DDN provides storage for applications such as, cloud storage services, supercomputing, life sciences and genomics, seismic processing, financial service trade and risk analysis, film production, live television broadcast, manufacturing, and video surveillance. Competition includes EMC Corporation, NetApp, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and others.
History
The company was originally founded in 1988 under the name MegaDrive Systems. MegaDrive merged with ImpactData, in 1998, to create DataDirect Networks. Alex Bouzari is the company’s CEO, chairman and co-founder. Paul Bloch is president and co-founder.
In October 2001, DDN completed a $9.9 million round of venture capital financing with ClearLight Partners LLC and Digital Coast Ventures. In 2002, the company ended its relationship with its venture capital financiers. In 2005, DDN created DataDirect Networks Federal, LLC - formalizing a team which holds the necessary clearances to support the company’s focus on the US government and intelligence community. In 2008, DDN reported that it had exceeded $100 million in annual revenue and claimed to provide storage systems for 48 of the top 100 supercomputers – with customers including Argonne National Laboratory and the NASA Ames Research Center. In 2011, DDN reported that it had exceeded the $200M annual revenue mark, and was reported to be the world's largest privately held storage company, based on 2009 revenues. In 2013, the company built the storage system for Titan supercomputer.
Products
The company carries products that provide block, parallel file and object storage. Block storage devices store data in chunks with a maximum fixed length. Parallel file systems spread the data across more than one storage device to provide redundancy and increase performance. Object file systems separate the file metadata information from the rest of the file data and store them in separate devices. The Lustre file system is an example of an object storage system and is supported by DDN’s products. The InfiniBand communications link is supported by some DDN systems. The company also provides a line of flash storage appliances as well as a storage management tool used to configure and monitor DDN storage devices.
Notable Awards and Achievements
2008:
Frost & Sullivan awards DDN its World Disk Storage for Digital Media Market Product Differentiation Innovation Award.
2009:
Frost & Sullivan awards DDN its World Disk Storage for Best Practice For Video Surveillance Capture & Archive.
2010:
DDN announces inclusion in Deloitte's Technology Fast 500™.
2011:
DDN announces that it has been selected for its seventh HPCWire award, as its Storage Fusion Architecture wins an Editors' Choice Award in the category of Best HPC Storage Product or Technology.
Inc. Magazine names DDN as the fastest growing $100M+ computer company, marking its second year of inclusion on the Inc. 500|5000 list.
2012:
DDN’s In-Storage Processing™ named among the Top 6 Technologies to Watch in 2012 by Infostor.
DDN CEO, Alex Bouzari, selected by HPC Wire as one of 2012’s “People To Watch”
The company is named America's fastest growing $200M+ privately held computer company by Inc. Magazine.
In 2013 DDN was recognized by the Los Angeles Business Journal as the fastest growing technology company over $100 million for the 3rd year in a row. DDN won some HPCWire magazine’s awards.
In 2014 the company won the National Association of Broadcasters’ (NAB’s) Best of Show Award for its WOS object storage product.
2016:
The company won the SVC Storage Company of the Year Award.
IDC MarketScape names DDN a Global Leader in Object Storage for 4th year.