Technology innovation often follows a predictable path: radical changes, followed by incremental improvements, then years of use until the new technology becomes “legacy” and is finally replaced by the next major change. The key for customers to stay on top of technology developments is to carefully evaluate new technologies and bring them in-house at the right time.

At the same time, incumbent vendors struggle to keep pace with changing technology while getting the maximum life and revenue out of their existing product investments. So they bolt new functionality onto their existing architectures and declare themselves “cutting edge.” But the foundation becomes increasingly shaky, and by the third or fourth add-on their technology has become cumbersome and inefficient.

History shows that true innovation rarely comes from established players. It is more likely to be introduced by newer players in the market who are not burdened by existing product investments or driven by the needs of their largest customers. New companies can take a fresh, forward-thinking approach to the market’s needs and emerging technologies. Nimble Storage has taken this approach.

Nimble Storage was founded by a team of industry veterans who developed groundbreaking primary storage and deduplication architectures at several market-leading storage companies. Their experience has given Nimble a unique perspective to solving the industry’s most pressing storage issues: reining in storage complexity, reducing costs, and implementing affordable backup and recovery.

The Nimble approach is based on the concept of converged storage, backup, and disaster recovery. It replaces an enterprise’s expensive high-RPM drives with a hybrid architecture that combines high-performance flash memory with low-cost, high-density SATA drives. And by deploying a second Nimble array in an off-site location, enterprises of any size can now obtain a complete, cost-effective data protection solution incorporating WAN-efficient primary-to-primary replication.

Before developing its new architecture, the Nimble team engaged with over a hundred enterprises – building a deep understanding of their key data storage and backup challenges. They asked IT managers what their “ideal” storage environment would look like. Invariably, the ideal solution was far less complex, much more powerful, and available for a fraction of the cost of today’s solutions.

Thanks to Nimble’s entirely new approach of cost-effective, converged data storage and reliable disaster recovery, the IT manager’s ideal has now become a reality.