ownCloud, Red Hat Partner on Open Source Storage

ownCloud Inc. and Red Hat (RHT) say they can deliver open source storage with lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and better compliance standards through a partnership that combines Red Hat Storage Server 3 with ownCloud’s file syncing and sharing platform.

By combining Red Hat’s latest open source data storage offering with ownCloud’s data application servers, the companies say, their partnership can reduce TCO by a factor of two. They illustrated that savings with performance benchmarks that modeled a large deployment of ownCloud and Red Hat Storage for 40,000 enterprise users.

Pricing for the solution will start at around $4.45 per user per month for 1,000 users on industry-standard hardware, according to the partners.

In addition to highlighting cost savings, ownCloud and Red Hat are hoping to attract users to the solution by touting its ability to deliver file storage and sharing that can scale as quickly as a public cloud, but without the security concerns and compliance challenges that result from storing private data on enterprise cloud servers.

“ownCloud offers businesses an open, compliant way for their employees to collaborate,” said Brent Compton, director of Ecosystem, Storage and Big Data at Red Hat. “With ownCloud Enterprise Edition and Red Hat Storage Server 3, businesses can better control sensitive data while more easily scaling to meet growing demand and expanding storage requirements. This combined collaboration and sharing solution offers a new alternative to enterprise and institutional customers, combining consumer-grade ease-of-use, regulatory compliance features, and commodity storage costs.”

The companies announced the collaboration Oct. 2, the same day Red Hat released version 3 of its Storage Server platform, which enhances its Hadoop compatibility and doubles its storage capacity.