StorONE today launched its software-defined storage platform S1 as a consumption-based service. The new product, S1-as-a-Service (S1aaS), integrates the vendor’s S1 combined file, block, and object storage software with Dell PowerEdge server hardware.

The software works with all-flash or hybrid arrays, virtual storage, secondary storage, and cloud storage, and it supports block, file, and object storage protocols.

“We have a complete data protection, data retention, and data integrity integrated inside the software. So it means that on top of the performance, you are able to get unlimited snapshots without any performance degradation,” said Gal Naor, CEO and co-founder of StorONE. The new product brings cloud economics to the data center and means companies don’t need to compromise between system performance and data protection, he added.

On this day 9 years ago, Naor sold his first company StorWize to IBM for $140 million. But storage is an even bigger challenge today, he said.

“We are going after the needs of the market, and the need today is storage. So we have solutions to a variety of needs,” said Naor. “More and more people from the industry joined us because they understand that something has to be changed with the storage.”

So after seven years of development, Noar and his board of tech visionaries including Microsoft Chairman John Thompson, former CEO and Chairman of Motorola Ed Zander, and Oracle Executive Technical Advisor Kirk Bradly, launched StorONE earlier this year.

“You are getting the latest server, you’re getting the Dell support on-site, and you’re getting SAS drives, the most reliable drive today, as part of it. Why we did it? We want to give the message to the end user, that storage is not an issue,” Naor said.