These 10 data storage startups are tackling disaster recovery and archiving, data protection, and high-speed and secure file sharing — and even cutting the cost and upping the performance of cloud-based tape libraries.

The data storage industry is going through a major transition from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. Research firm IDC, for instance, late October reported that second-quarter 2023 spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments including dedicated and shared IT environments rose 7.9 percent over the prior year to $24.6 billion, while spending on non-cloud infrastructure fell 8.3 percent to $14.4 billion.

Indeed, according to IDC, only 30.6 percent of worldwide enterprise infrastructure spending will be dedicated to non-cloud deployments by 2027, down from 41.0 percent in 2022.

[Related: Storage 100: The Digital Bridge Between The Cloud And On-Premises Worlds]

As spending on data storage continues to shift away from on-premises infrastructures to the cloud, it seems natural that new entrants to the storage market gravitate to more niche parts of the business, especially toward technologies aimed at making it easier for business users and consumers to find better ways to store and manage their data.

Many of the newest startups in the storage market exemplify that transition. Included in the list of storage startups for the first half of 2024 are companies developing novel ways to recover from IT disasters, increase the performance and ease of file transfers, improve file sync and sharing, better protect data, and even make it easier to move tape backup and archive data to the cloud. And these startups are increasingly using AI to build their technologies.

CRN takes a look at 10 startups aiming to bring new storage capabilities to market and stake their claim to a bigger part of the business going forward.

Arpio

Co-Founder, CEO: Doug Neumann

Headquarters: Durham, N.C.

Arpio develops disaster recovery technology for Amazon Web Services environments. The company promises a full recovery of a customer’s entire AWS operating environment, including infrastructure and data, regardless of the architecture. This includes virtualized, containerized and serverless workloads and their managed data services. Arpio supports over 100 AWS resources across nearly 30 services. For security, Arpio is SOC 2-certified and HIPAA-compliant. While Arpio has been available to enterprise customers for a few years now, the company only last year closed an $8.2 million seed funding round led by S3 Ventures and Companion Ventures.

Atombeam

Chairman, CEO: Charles Yeomans

Headquarters: Moraga, Calif.

Atombeam develops technology for reducing the space data needs when stored and transmitted, even the smallest messages that are typically said to be impossible to compress, according to the company. Its Neurpac Platform uses AI and machine learning to automatically generate and deploy code words to be used as a more efficient representation of the data being transmitted from the edge to the cloud, achieving up to a 75 percent reduction in bandwidth. Atombeam later this year plans to release Neurcom, a neural net AI to enhance video and audio codecs to enable increased data throughput while retaining image or audio capability. The company is using equity crowdfunding to raise funds.

CESS

Chairman: Nicholas Zaldastani

Headquarters: Manchester, U.K.

CESS, or Cumulus Encrypted Storage System, builds a blockchain-powered decentralized storage and content delivery network infrastructure. Users and creators can use the platform for on-chain data sharing, while builders can develop and deploy decentralized applications. CESS offers an optimized Web3 technology for storing and retrieving high-frequency dynamic data while ensuring data sovereignty and complete user privacy. Its decentralized physical infrastructure network model allows the mass deployment of network nodes globally.

Cloud IBR

Founder, CEO: Gregory Tellone

Headquarters: Woodbury, N.Y.

Cloud IBR provides an automated one-click disaster recovery SaaS platform for Veeam backups stored in Backblaze or Wasabi Object Storage. It recovers mission-critical data when ransomware strikes and provides failover of Veeam Backups stored off-site in Backblaze or Wasabi Object Storage. One click builds an on-demand bare metal cloud server and storage infrastructure as needed after an incident or for compliance testing without the need for any capital expenditures.

Ctrl+Z

Owner: Roberto Morelato

Headquarters: Bolzano, Italy

Ctrl+Z provides a range of services to help store and manage activities in the cloud. The company’s technology allows for easy access to data from anywhere at any time. The company develops specific applications and an all-in-one offering for businesses’ cloud storage needs. Its platform also integrates with existing workflows to let users share data with each other and automate work processes.

Entegria Systems

Co-Founder, CEO: Joseph DeAngelo

Headquarters: Mount Laurel, N.J.

Entegria Systems is a software developer specializing in digital file management with encryption, compliance and internet technologies in mind. The company’s line card includes RheoWorx, a secure data workflow system that enables businesses to build automated processes for data movement, and FastSSR, software for high-speed and secure TCPIP mainframe file transfers.

Flextech

President, CEO: Sueki Yuto

Headquarters: Tokyo

Flextech is the owner and developer of TeraBox, a provider of cloud storage services the company said already has over 250 million registered users and over 20 million daily active users worldwide. TeraBox stores data using SSL protocols, encryption algorithms and access controls to provide secure transmission and storage of confidential information, along with client-side endpoint encryption and a large-scale distributed system to maintain the security and privacy of sensitive data.

Geyser Data

Co-Founder, CEO: Nelson Nahum

Headquarters: Tustin, Calif.

Geyser, which just launched early this year, is already on the market with the Geyser Tape-as-a-Service Archive, an application that gives businesses the ability to store their S3-compatible backup and archive data which would normally go to tape on the cloud using Microsoft Azure or AWS. Geyser’s service allows data to be retrieved at no extra cost. The company partners with Spectra Logic’s Spectra Cube cloud-optimized tape library to create an object-based tape system.

Slik

Co-Founders: Arpit and Charvi Agarwal

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.

Slik is the developer of Slik Safe, a high-speed file management tool with on-device AI and end-to-end encryption. Slik Safe offers decentralized and encrypted file backups and synchronization with encryption for file search and access. A business’ files and folders are backed up with the ability to store and share those files, and data is protected on local devices with encryption before being uploaded to the cloud.

StillsWeb

Founder, CEO: Amit Srivastava

Headquarters: Mumbai, India

StillsWeb develops technology that aims to help businesses store, organize and regularly share a lot of images. The company goes beyond offering a cloud storage platform by adding advanced security and proofing capabilities as a service. Backup copies of all the uploaded images are stored in geographically distributed servers for recovery in the event of a disaster. Images can be organized via a visually attractive portfolio page or client galleries, and online and off-line images can be synced.