I am excited and proud that Object Matrix has been acquired and is now a part of DataCore.
This is of course a momentous step on the Object Matrix journey and for me personally, and it is also one that makes a huge amount of sense.
Object Matrix’s DNA as a company and the values we wish to carry forward were explored in “Sankofa is our future”: including being a technology disruptor, constantly innovating, and being a true Object Matrix family of customers, channel partners, and employees.
So if you are a company like Object Matrix and you are going to get married then make sure it is to someone who has the same values as you do!
In DataCore we have found a kindred spirit. They are a technology disruptor with SAN Symphony: (a software-defined storage solution for SAN and HCI); this was one of the first such products to market and hugely successful. And DataCore has a strong philosophy of constant innovation bringing out products such as the Perifery Panel for Adobe Creative Clouds, and Bolt for Kubernetes Storage. If you don’t know about them already, DataCore is a name that you are going to hear an awful lot about in the coming years.
This is of course one of those times when I have to blink twice to believe it…
Roll back the clock to the start and, well, I’d like to say that we had perfectly planned this… in reality we were a handful of technology geeks, heads down, and trying to make a perfect product. We all believed in object storage (at the time, no one else was making such a solution, and we were coding into the small hours to create the product we loved). We were told by investors and by industry blue-chip companies that we were wrong and that filesystems and CAS were the future (does anyone even know what CAS is anymore??). We didn’t initially know much about fund-raising or even much about selling (we certainly know a lot now!). But we had a mission and sometimes not knowing the challenges you’ll have to get through lets you carry on regardless.
Could we make a storage product that could scale and take away the pain of managing large amounts of data? Against products from “blue chip” companies and their R&D? How could it be possible to do that?
Vision. Talent. Focus. Guts.
We used to program in attics, on kitchen tables, and in borrowed offices. We had second-hand desks and laptops. We screwed test nodes together (from bare bone parts), and had just about enough money to buy our staple diet of Vietnamese takeaways. In the very early years our money ran out. So we had to have patient partners and frugal lives. One infamous Christmas party was at a local kebab shop; I wish we had the photos. It was one of the best!
We were stubborn and finally had something else… customers. Pioneers, no less. The ball was finally rolling.
And looking forward…
Our core has evolved from “systems that scale and manage the data so that you don’t need to” to also include: connecting people to media. The product now has a wealth of access and integration tools. It’s deployed on-prem, in hybrid, and cloud.
With DataCore, we will leverage their experienced management team, collaborate with their R&D and product teams, and will supercharge the reach of MatrixStore through their sales channels.
We have a product that is established and being augmented all the time and some amazing novel R&D is in the pipeline that I believe will be as disruptive as object storage was at the start of our journey.
Oh wow.. it’s emotional writing this blog: I’m so full of pride and thanks to so many people: what follows is just a small list of thank yous – I could write so many more:
- Of course, thank you to the Object Matrix workers; a company is only the sum of its parts (past and present), and I am really amazed by the passion and talent delivered on a daily basis.
- To customers like Gorilla in Cardiff, who took a chance on what was at the time an unproven product; but no less to every customer who puts their faith in our products and team – it means everything.
- To many supporters who took time out to give advice to a young CEO, including Roger Fawcett who sat through 15 years of board meetings without asking for a penny for that..
- To those who backed us with their personal, hard-earned cash (note to any entrepreneurs: taking other people’s money is a huge responsibility; if you have a conscience it will weigh heavily until it is returned).
- To so many individuals running through my mind right now – I hope I get the chance to thank them all in person.
- A big thank you to the DataCore team, especially Dave, Abhi, Amanda and Kevin, for believing in Object Matrix, our products and our vision, and giving us the chance to take it to a bigger stage.
I’m off for a sit-down.
It’s been a long few weeks closing this deal, and a very long Object Matrix journey worth reflecting on; but lastly to say it won’t be a long sit down – in so many ways we have only just begun…
Thank you / Diolch!, Jonathan
About Object Matrix
Object Matrix is the award-winning software company that pioneered object storage and the modernisation of media archives. It exists to enable global collaboration, increase operational efficiencies and empower creativity through deployment of MatrixStore, the on-prem, hybrid and cloud storage platform. Their unified deployment approach ensures content spans on-prem and cloud storage whilst their focus on the media industry gives them a deep understanding of the challenges organisations face when protecting, processing and sharing video content. Customers include: NBC Universal, Warner Bros. Discovery, MSG-N, ATP Media, BT, and the BBC, to name but a few!
