As part of CRN’s 2026 Storage 100, here are 50 vendors bringing software capabilities, services and cloud connectivity to storage technology.
The software-defined storage companies on CRN’s Storage 100 list may be seen as hardware companies, but their uniqueness stems from their software. Their storage functionalities, their storage capabilities, everything that makes them unique was built into the software. And while there may be some exceptions—Everpure, formerly known as Pure Storage, for instance, designs its own SSDs—it’s almost universal that the value comes from software.
But take that a step further. These companies are now more often than not offering their software separate from their hardware to also work on virtual appliance or cloud appliances. A couple, led by NetApp, also offer their software as cloud-native technologies available on hyperscale clouds like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.
So, using NetApp as an example, is it a storage hardware company? Yes, it sells hardware, but its software has become a major part of the cloud.
Then there are companies that make software that have the same capabilities as their hardware peers without any hardware at all. DataCore was a pioneer in developing software that runs on any x86 server hardware.
As part of CRN’s 2026 Storage 100, here are 50 vendors bringing software capabilities, services and cloud connectivity to storage technology.
Amax Information Technologies
Jerry Shih
President
Amax designs and manufactures high-performance AI infrastructure, including servers and storage with support from longtime partner Nvidia. The Fremont, Calif.-based company is best-known for its custom AI and liquid-cooling servers for high-performance computing, enterprise and government but supports them with its StorMax storage line for high-availability applications.
Cloudian
Michael Tso
Co-Founder, CEO
San Mateo, Calif.-based Cloudian is developer of the HyperStore data platform that scales to exabytes of capacity and features fully native S3 APIs. The software-defined platform is compatible with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure and includes distribution of data where it is needed, multi-tenancy for secure sharable storage, and military-grade security and ransomware protection.
Ctera Networks
Oded Nagel
CEO
Ctera develops the Ctera Intelligent Data Platform, which the New York-based company says provides a unified data fabric for automating workflows and processes to work with data stored anywhere. It makes data natively available to AI training clusters and analytics engines at wire speed while providing a cyber-resilient foundation with air-gapped, immutable backups and fast ransomware recovery.
DataCore Software
Dave Zabrowski
CEO
DataCore was a pioneer in software-defined storage designed to run on any hardware, and the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based company has never looked back. DataCore in 2025 made two acquisitions, Arcastream’s parallel file system business and hyperconverged infrastructure technology developer StarWind, giving it a full portfolio of block, object, file and container storage capabilities.
DataSpan
Paul Zaidins, Sharon Zaidins
Co-Chairpersons, Co-CEOs
DataSpan, which specializes in building and servicing data center infrastructures, has spent the last 50-plus years helping businesses acquire, distribute, back up, archive and secure storage, and has over half of the Fortune 1000 companies as customers. The Farmers Branch, Texas-based company’s storage offerings run the gamut from primary and secondary storage to data protection and hardware maintenance and support.
DDN
Alex Bouzari
Co-Founder, CEO
DDN is a leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance storage systems, and since 2016 has been a close collaborator with Nvidia to drive the data side of enterprise AI at exabyte scale. The Chatsworth, Calif.-based company’s portfolio includes HyperPOD, which it calls the world’s first turnkey inferencing and RAG offering, and its Data Intelligence Platform for unifying and accelerating end-to-end AI pipelines.
Dell Technologies
Michael Dell
Founder, Chairman, CEO
Dell remains a leading data center infrastructure supplier with full lines of servers, storage and networking technology. The Round Rock, Texas-based company remains the largest external enterprise storage provider, with all-flash block, file and object storage systems; private cloud; AI; and cyber resilience filling out its portfolio. Dell’s PowerScale storage targets AI workload acceleration.
Everpure
Charles Giancarlo
Chairman, CEO
Everpure, which until early this year was known as Pure Storage, started as the first all-flash-only storage vendor but has since invested heavily in primary, archive and public cloud storage as well as its Evergreen//One storage as a service. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company last year introduced the Enterprise Data Cloud, which aims to deliver a cloud-scale storage and data management experience.
Hitachi Vantara
Sheila Rohra
CEO
Hitachi Vantara is a longtime provider of storage, data management, Infrastructure as a Service and integration platforms for mission-critical and enterprise operations. On the storage side, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company provides technology for block, file and object storage as well as software-defined storage that is AI-ready and includes built-in data resilience.
HPE
Antonio Neri
President, CEO
HPE storage technology provides a unified intelligent platform that helps store and manage data from the edge to the cloud. The Spring, Texas-based company’s storage systems also include security capabilities to help reduce cyber risk and provide consistent governance for AI. HPE also offers its GreenLake unified platform for cloud services of which storage is an important part.
Huawei
Zhengfei Ren
Director, CEO
While U.S. concerns about Huawei’s Chinese connections keep the company out of the U.S. storage market, the Shenzhen, China-based company remains one of the world’s top major data center infrastructure providers with a full portfolio of compute, storage, networking, wireless and cloud technologies. On the storage side, Huawei offers all-flash systems, AI-ready storage, scale-out storage, data protection and Storage as a Service.
IBM
Arvind Krishna
Chairman, President, CEO
IBM has a storage hardware and software portfolio with a wide range of capabilities. Big Blue’s storage hardware includes high-speed all-flash and hybrid flash systems, tape libraries and storage systems for its IBM Z mainframes and IBM Power servers. The Armonk, N.Y.-based company’s storage software includes a cloud-based storage management and support platform with predictive analytics along with a cloud backup application.
Impossible Cloud
Kai Wawrzinek
Co-Founder, CEO
Impossible Cloud is a builder of enterprise cloud services featuring S3-compatible object storage for use with data protection, disaster recovery and ransomware protection. The Hamburg, Germany-based company offers high-speed and scalable cloud object storage, along with purpose-built data protection with immutable storage to meet the requirements of most regulatory environments.
Infortrend Technology
Stone Lo
CEO
Infortrend was started in Taiwan over 30 years ago and says it has over 1 million redundant rack-mounted systems deployed worldwide. The New Taipei City, Taiwan-based company offers a wide line of enterprise storage and AI infrastructure technologies including entry-level and enterprise unified storage systems, SAN and NAS systems, parallel file storage, expansion enclosure and several related software applications.
Infinidat
Phil Bullinger
CEO
Infinidat develops enterprise primary and data protection storage systems that work so well that Lenovo early last year said it would acquire the Herzliya, Israel-based company. The deal closed in April. Infinidat is the developer of the InfiniBox SSA all-flash storage and InfiniBox hybrid storage, as well as the InfiniBox data protection storage system and InfiniGuard purpose-built backup appliance.
JetStor
Jim Gallagher
President, CEO
JetStor develops custom-designed storage systems targeting contemporary applications from an extensive selection of configurations, host interfaces, drive types, expansion options and 10 RAID levels. The Chatworth, Calif.-based company’s line card includes SAN, NAS and unified, NVMe all-flash, direct-attach and expansion storage systems plus its Symply line of tape libraries.
Lenovo
Yuanqing Yang
Chairman, CEO
Lenovo this year instantly became a provider of some of the highest-performing storage systems with the April closing of its acquisition of Infinidat. In the meantime, the Hong Kong-based server, workstation and PC maker continues to offer a wide range of storage technology including all-flash arrays, hybrid flash arrays, storage expansion arrays and Fibre Channel switches.
Lightbits Labs
Eran Kirzner
Co-Founder, CEO
Lightbits Labs is focused on developing high-performance scalable technology targeting performance-sensitive workloads at scale. Lightbits Labs’ storage platform works with any x86 servers for on-premises deployments and runs on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, with license portability for hybrid cloud strategies. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company’s LightInferra technology targets AI inference workloads.
Linbit
Philipp Reisner
Co-Founder, CEO
Vienna, Austria-based Linbit is the developer of the open-source storage software DRBD and LINSTOR. DRBD provides distributed replicated storage for Linux, and is part of the Linux kernel. LINBIT provides high-performance block storage with enterprise clusterwide volume management in Kubernetes, CloudStack, Proxmo and OpenStack environments. Other versions focus on high-availability environments, disaster recovery and hyperconverged infrastructure.
Liqid
Edgar Masri
CEO
Broomfield, Colo.-based Liqid develops composable infrastructure software with a single user interface for GPU, memory and storage composability. That software, Liqid Matrix, works on bare-metal servers to fully utilize infrastructure resources to provide performance and agility for AI, high-performance computing and modern applications. It dynamically scales up and scales out the resources and provides real-time resource control.
MinIO
Anand Babu Periasamy, Garima Kapoor
Co-Founders, Co-CEOs
The Redwood City, Calif.-based company’s AIStor platform is software-defined technology that provides exascale performance and limitless scale for enterprise data across edge, core and cloud environments. The AIStor provides security and compliance including encryption and anti-ransomware and works across a host of storage protocols for table and object data. A built-in data engine provides data management, replication, resilience and acceleration.
NetApp
George Kurian
CEO
NetApp pioneered connecting on-premises storage to the cloud, realizing that if customers were going to move data to the cloud it had better move with them. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s storage technology is available natively on the biggest hyperscalers. NetApp’s new AI Data Engine discovers data wherever it is, keeps it current automatically, secures it and makes it ready for AI applications.
Nexsan
Vincent Phillips
CEO
Nexsan was a pioneer in the development of high-density storage. The Irvine, Calif.-based company now offers high-density block storage, the Unity line of unified block and file storage and the Assureon series of immutable storage systems. Nexsan late last year introduced a new line, the Nexsan VHR-series of immutable storage systems for Veeam environments.
Nutanix
Rajiv Ramaswami
CEO
Hyperconverged infrastructure technology developer Nutanix provides a platform enterprises can use to power AI, modern and legacy applications seamlessly across on-premises, edge and public clouds with a single, unified operating model. Businesses can use the San Jose, Calif.-based company’s platform to operate containers and virtualization across their environments, supporting portability and security of enterprise AI and other apps.
OpenDrives
Trevor Morgan
CEO
OpenDrives is a software-defined NAS and cloud-native data storage technology provider specializing in video and rich media storage management workflows for creative teams. The Los Angeles-based company’s flagship Atlas NAS platform provides high-performance data storage and management supporting high-bandwidth, low-latency workflows, while its Astraeus platform provides scale-out data services built on cloud-native principles.
Open-E
Krzysztof (Kristof) Franek
President, CEO
Open-E develops hardware-agnostic software-defined storage technology to give enterprises flexible deployment, business continuity and disaster recovery, and simplified management. The Tokern, Germany-based company offers two platforms. Its Open-E JovianDSS is comprehensive storage software providing data integrity, reliability and security, while Open-E JovianVHR is a Linux-hardened data protection depository that also works with Veeam Software.
Oracle
Clay Magouyrk, Mike Sicilia
Co-CEOs
Oracle is one of the fastest-growing cloud hyperscalers even as it continues to be a major player in the middleware business. On the storage side, Austin, Texas-based Oracle offers its on-premises Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Object Storage platform with 11 nines of durability. On the cloud, it offers block, object and file primary storage along with archive and data transfer capabilities.
OSnexus
Steven Umbehocker
Founder, CEO
Santa Clara, Calif.-based OSNexus’ QuantaStor software-defined storage platform provides a unified file, block and object storage platform targeting a broad set of storage requirements including backup, archive, server virtualization, big data, cloud computing, and high-performance storage for HPC environments. The open storage unified grid architecture enables both scale-up and scale-out storage infrastructure in multitenant environments.
Panzura
Dan Waldschmidt
CEO
San Jose, Calif.-based Panzura started with a storage gateway for moving data into and out of the cloud but is now known for CloudFS, its hybrid cloud file services platform that transforms cloud storage into a high-performance enterprise file system. CloudFS delivers a single global namespace across hundreds of locations to help users collaborate as if they were in the same room.
Peak:AIO
Roger Cummings
CEO
Peak:AIO came early to the enterprise software-defined storage business. The Reston, Va.-based company’s latest iteration is Open pNFS, a parallel file system targeting AI and high-performance computing workloads that can be deployed on customers’ existing hardware. Built on open standards, it scales from a single node to super clusters without the need to change clients or workflows.
Qnap Systems
Teddy Kuo
Co-Founder, Chairman
Qnap develops software and hardware to help businesses and individual store in storage, cloud storage, networking, and video surveillance. On the storage side, the New Taipei City, Taiwan-based company provides NAS and all-flash NAS appliances as well as hybrid storage servers and an edge AI storage server that integrates storage, virtualization and compute for deploying on-premises AI applications.
Quantum
Hugues Meyrath
CEO
Quantum develops technology to help enrich, orchestrate, protect and archive video and unstructured data securely and at scale. That technology supports business needs through the entire data life cycle from capturing and storing to using the data with a high-performance file system for video to software subscriptions and as-a-service options. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s edge-to-core technologies also feature built-in security.
Qumulo
Douglas Gourlay
CEO
Seattle-based Qumulo develops an enterprise-grade unstructured data platform that works on any hardware, hypervisor, or public cloud to power high-performance workloads. It works with file and object data in any location with a single interface. The Qumulo platform is a cloud-native, exabyte-scale technology managing enterprise file workloads on premises, at the edge and in the cloud.
Scale Computing
Bill Morrow
CEO
Scale Computing is a major edge-first platform company focused on powering AI-driven distributed enterprises in data centers, distributed enterprises and at the edge. The Indianapolis-based company provides edge computing, managed network security, re-virtualization and hyperconverged technologies that deliver an integrated infrastructure that scales to 50,000 locations. Scale Computing provides services to migrate from VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V to its platform.
Scality
Jerome Lecat
CEO
Scality develops storage infrastructure for all capacity, performance, application and data location requirements with infinite scalability from core to cloud to edge with 100 percent uptime, enterprise-grade security and ransomware protection. The San Francisco-based company’s two primary storage software lines are Scality Ring unified storage management for file and object storge and Scality Artesca for secure S3 object storage with immutable backups.
Silk
Dani Golan
Founder, CEO
Needham, Mass.-based Silk develops software-defined SAN to provide a cloud acceleration layer for mission-critical applications, decoupling data performance behavior from data growth so that performance remains predictable and concurrency increases. With Silk, mixed applications can share infrastructure, and resources can be adapted in real time without tuning or reconfiguration to run an increased number of applications on a single infrastructure.
Simplyblock
Robert Pankow
Co-Founder, CEO
Simplyblock focuses on building a high-performance data platform to manage scalability issues around IO-heavy workloads across bare metal, virtual machines, Kubernetes and the cloud. The London, U.K.-based company’s MAUS modular design deploys anywhere with a mix of hardware and the ability to upgrade as needed. The adaptive platform tailors performance to hardware and provides quality of service for every tenant.
Spectra Logic
Nathan Thompson
CEO
Boulder, Colo.-based Spectra Logic helps modernize IT infrastructure and protect and preserve data with a portfolio of data management software, file and object storage appliances, and tape storage to manage, migrate, store and preserve long-term business data, along with features to make them ransomware-resilient, whether on-premises, in a single cloud, across multiple clouds or in all locations at once.
StoneFly
Mo Tahmasebi
Founder, President, CEO
StoneFly’s software-defined storage technology powers enterprise workloads including backup and disaster recovery, private cloud storage, media and entertainment data lakes, AI, and long-term archival while supporting unified SAN, NAS and object storage. The Gardena, Calif.-based company’s storage software integrates with major virtualization platforms and supports leading backup solutions including Veeam, HYCU, Commvault and Rubrik.
StorMagic
Susan Odle
CEO
StorMagic provides hyperconverged infrastructure technology to virtualize an organization’s compute, storage and network for easy on-premises infrastructure management. The Bristol, U.K.-based company’s three primary lines include /SvHCI, which provides a full-stack hyperconverged infrastructure; /SvSAN, a high-availability offering, which works with a customer’s choice of hypervisor; and the /Edge Control fleet management tool.
StorOne
Gal Naor
Co-Founder, CEO
New York-based StorOne’s S1 enterprise storage platform takes advantage of intelligent auto-tiering to help reduce flash dependency while delivering enterprise-class performance as a way to address modern data protection, security and performance requirements. S1 fully separates software from hardware, supports all major storage protocols, and runs on any server, any disk media, and across on-premises, hybrid and cloud environments.
StorPool Storage
Boyan Ivanov
Co-Founder, CEO
StorPool Storage provides global distributed block storage technology the Sofia, Bulgaria-based company says replaces traditional SANs, all-flash arrays and other technologies to help leverage standard servers to build fast, scalable and reliable shared storage systems across hyperconverged infrastructure, public or private clouds, shared hosting, and MSPs for use cases including Oracle virtualization, VMware alternatives, databases, disaster recovery or bare-metal Kubernetes.
Supermicro
Charles Liang
Founder, Chairman, President, CEO
Supermicro is a major data center infrastructure provider and builds high-end servers and storage systems for sales through the channel or to industry-leading OEMs. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s storage line includes all-flash NVME arrays; petascale storage systems using Nvidia Grace Superchips for high-performance for AI, high-performance computing and software-defined storage; and a variety of top-loading and front-loading storage systems.
Synology
James Chen
CEO
Synology develops a wide range of servers, storage, data protection, video surveillance and networking equipment, along with private cloud personal storage devices. On the storage side, the New Taipei City, Taiwan-based company offers a variety of all-flash arrays, high-density hard drive arrays, scalable enterprise storage arrays for high-performance and capacity requirements, and more, along with its ActiveProtect purpose-built backup appliance.
TrueNAS
Brett Davis
CEO
TrueNAS, which last year rebranded itself from its prior name iXsystems to center its focus entirely on enterprise storage, develops what it calls the world’s most deployed NAS solution with 15 million-plus downloads to date. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s universal data platform takes advantage of the ZFS file system to scale unified storage for use in virtualization, backup and other data-intensive workloads.
Vast Data
Renen Hallak
Founder, CEO
New York-based Vast Data builds what it calls the AI Operating System, which is a global data platform built from the ground up to manage the complete AI life cycle. It provides a unified foundation for storage, database and compute runtime to help eliminate the need to stitch together dozens of tools for training, inference, autonomous agents and more.
Vdura
Ken Claffey
CEO
Vdura, which until mid-2024 was known as Panasas, built what the San Jose, Calif.-based company calls the first true parallel file system with a single global namespace and liner performance scaling. That technology has since evolved into a modern data fabric for AI and high-performance computing, with direct-to-node performance, flexible medial tiers, and software-defined storage automation with both flash-first and hybrid tiers.
VergeIO
Yan Ness
CEO
San Diego-based hyperconverged infrastructure developer VergeIO is the maker of the VergeOS, a single, unified software platform running on commodity hardware. VergeOS integrates virtualization, storage and networking into one cohesive system that has built-in AI and machine learning to better manage and optimize itself, intelligently allocate resources, and extend the usability of the hardware.
Weka
Liran Zvibel
Co-Founder, CEO
Weka started with a focus on developing a fast software-defined parallel file system that evolved into a high-performance data platform and more recently into an adaptive AI infrastructure. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s NeuralMesh is a storage system purpose-built for accelerated compute workloads, interconnecting data, compute and AI services in any data environment including edge, core, hyperscale cloud and neoclouds.
Zadara
Yoram Novick
CEO
Zadara designs a distributed cloud platform on which AI edge clouds are built with seamless multitenancy through fully automated, end-to-end provisioning of compute, storage and networking resources. The Irvine, Calif.-based company’s fully managed clouds are designed to work with any workload whether on-premises, hybrid, multi-cloud, or at the edge. It features a consumption-based pricing model with zero data egress fees.
