The Times They are A-Changing, or are They?

By Larry Gentry, President and CEO, cStor

18 Years and Counting

On August 28, 2020, cStor (Custom Storage Inc.) celebrated its 18th anniversary of being in business.

When the company was founded by Bill Nowlin in 2002, Bill started it with the objective of solving clients’ problems around data protection strategies. He saw a need in the market where clients were looking for help protecting their business-critical data so that it was available when needed, could be easily recovered and could be used to make business decisions. At the time, that need was not being met by any single manufacturer. Bill, being a savvy engineer, knew he could help clients by deploying products from multiple manufacturers to provide solutions that would protect data and ensure that data was available to meet business needs. cStor used strategies like synchronous or asynchronous replication, daily change backups, full weekly backups, data encryption, DR copies, etc. Even in 2002, data was king, and without it, you had no chance of making the right decisions for your organization.

Over the years, the products have changed. The speed at which clients want to access the data has changed, how the data must be protected has changed, and cybersecurity solutions and practices emerged, but what hasn’t changed is that data is still king! Having accurate, timely copies of the data, keeping it secure from the bad guys, and retaining a second copy for business continuity and a third copy for DR are all still critical in today’s organizations. What has changed is the speed of the demands, how we accomplish these tasks within the business, and how quickly those items are processed and available.

Many of the solutions we deployed 18 years ago have come and gone, just as I suspect the solutions currently deployed will change in the next 18 years, but the strategies remain consistent. What has allowed us to continue to be successful is that we stay focused on what the client needs to be successful. We are constantly looking at new solutions that will meet our clients’ needs, because at the end of the day, if our clients are not successful, neither is cStor. This is what we focus on every day – because data and our clients are kings!