The view of object stores as nothing more than cheap and deep storage is changing, as the technology finds its way into AI, machine learning and analytics use cases. Nvidia's recent acquisition of SwiftStack to bolster its artificial intelligence stack underscored the ways that object storage is expanding beyond backing up and archiving cold data. High-performance object stores are taking on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, analytics and container-based workloads, as enterprises try to gain insight into their unstructured data. Some use fast flash storage to accelerate small-file throughput. SwiftStack claimed GPU servers working in parallel could access petabytes of data stored on spinning disk-based object clusters at a rate of more than 100 GBps.

SwiftStack is being acquired by NVIDIA. SwiftStack is a software-driven data storage and management platform for data-intensive applications and workflows, providing access to data across the edge, core data centers and public clouds. The image below, from the SwiftStack web site gives some idea of the SwiftStack software ecosystem. SwiftStack says that it has worked for more than a year with NVIDIA to solve the data challenges to enable AI at scale. The release about the announcement says that, "Last year, when we announced SwiftStack 7, we unveiled our focus on the SwiftStack Data Platform for AI, HPC, and accelerated computing. This included SwiftStack 1space as a valuable piece of the puzzle, enabling data acceleration in the core, at the edge, and in the cloud."

Cloud data storage and management platform SwiftStack announced Thursday that it had agreed to be acquired by graphics processing and artificial intelligence (AI) specialist NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA). SwiftStack offers cloud storage capabilities that are already deeply embedded with NVIDIA's DGX server and supercomputer, which are specifically built to accelerate AI applications, helping to support large-scale AI and machine learning deployments. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but in three previous funding rounds, SwiftStack had raised $23.6 million from the likes of Mayfield Fund, OpenView Venture Partners, Storm Ventures, and UMC Capital. The deal is expected to close in the coming weeks. The company joined NVIDIA's partner network in mid-2019 as a solution provider for AI and machine learning.

Nvidia today announced that it has acquired SwiftStack, a software-centric data storage and management platform that supports public cloud, on-premises and edge deployments. The company's recent launches focused on improving its support for AI, high-performance computing and accelerated computing workloads, which is surely what Nvidia is most interested in here. "Building AI supercomputers is exciting to the entire SwiftStack team," says the company's co-founder and CPO Joe Arnold in today's announcement. "We couldn't be more thrilled to work with the talented folks at NVIDIA and look forward to contributing to its world-leading accelerated computing solutions." The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition, but SwiftStack had previously raised about $23.6 million in Series A and B rounds led by Mayfield Fund and OpenView Venture Partners.

Manjrekar comes to WekaIO from SwiftStack, a leading provider of data storage and management solutions for data-driven customers. During his time at SwiftStack, he was Head of AI, responsible for Product, Solutions, and Corporate Development. Prior to SwiftStack, he had roles as Senior Director at Vexata, EMC, NetApp, Force10 Networks and previously held Senior Eng. Manjrekar is a seasoned IT professional who has extensive experience in building and managing emerging businesses across the USA, Asia, and EMEA. He brings an established background in providing effective product management, solutions marketing, and strategic alliances, along with a strong sense of business development vision and leadership to his new position.

The San Francisco software vendor's roots lie in the storage, backup and archive of massive amounts of unstructured data on commodity servers running a commercially supported version of OpenStack Swift. But SwiftStack has steadily expanded its reach over the last eight years, and its 7.0 update takes aim at the new scale-out storage and data management architecture the company claims is necessary for AI, machine learning and analytics workloads. SwiftStack said it worked with customers to design clusters that scale linearly to handle multiple petabytes of data and support throughput of more than 100 GB per second. That allows it to handle workloads such as autonomous vehicle applications that feed data into GPU-based servers. Marc Staimer, president of Dragon Slayer Consulting, said throughput of 100 GB per second is "really fast" for any type of storage and "incredible" for an object-based system.