Our Data Storage Heritage

In 1989 our founder, already working in the data storage industry for a Fujitsu disk drive distributor and a recent graduate from the Phoenix Institute of Technology (PIT), read the famous case study “A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)” (University of California, Berkeley). So intrigued with the technology and what it could mean for the industry he learned everything he could and less than three years later left his minority shareholder stake in the first company he helped found to start Partners Workstation Products (which would later be incorporated as Partners Data Systems, Inc.). In early 1992, development of Partners first RAID products began based on early versions of Digi-Data’s RAID controllers installed in a customized chassis of his design.

What’s in a name?

In the mid-90’s a few of us were sitting around bouncing ideas off each other about what the name of our latest line of RAID storage products should be. Some of the people in the group at that time were into surfing (waves) and all of us were definitely into the latest craze: “surfing the web”. It was a really new thing at the time. This is not long after Netscape and Yahoo were founded. Remember Netscape?!

So, as we were throwing around ideas someone declared: “We surf, therefore we store” — and it simply clicked. Not only did this grab our local Southern California flavor, but back then “surfing the web” often involved storing what we downloaded. It just made sense.

We simply combined “Surf” with “RAID” and SurfRAID was born.

 

 

The “Surf” Brand

SurfRAID is actually only one of three “Surf” brands we’ve had over the years. The other two are SurfSTOR and SurfBURNER.

SurfSTOR was a line of external SCSI attached storage subsystems typically connected to high-end Sun Microsystems, SGI and HP workstations. The most popular models were single device units containing either a disk drive, tape drive, CD-ROM or later, a DVD-Writer. These were very popular because network speeds were relatively slow, so local storage was a requirement for users to get the most performance out of their expensive workstations. We sold thousands and thousands of these. The market then shifted away from individual external storage at end user workstations, toward centralized storage on file servers, as network speeds got faster.

SurfBURNER, on the other hand, wasn’t hardware — it was a niche software product specifically made to simplify the process of burning of DVDs on Sun Solaris OS-based systems. Unlike Windows, MacOS and even Linux systems at the time, Solaris (Sun Microsystems Operating System) was really behind in the DVD-burning market and didn’t have an easy way for users to burn DVDs. Within a few weeks, we wrote the first version of the SurfBURNER software (flames in the logo and all!) and packaged it with our SurfSTOR line, the DVD writers. These were very popular all over the world — we even sold a lot of them to Sun Microsystems’ own field offices!

 

 

Who Are Our Customers?

We have customers across nearly every industry — from aerospace to zoology. Companies big and small and even international. Many names you might not recognize but they include cities, counties, schools, universities, legal, energy, defense, government, entertainment and many more.

For our blatant self-serving credibility, here are some customers you might recognize (listed alphabetically):

Adobe, Allied Signal, Arizona State University, Armstrong Atlantic State University, BAE, Ball Aerospace, Blue Coat, Boeing, Bridgewater Associates, California Institute of Technology, Case Western University, City of Chula Vista, City of St. Paul, Computer Sciences Corporation, Consumers Energy, Costco, Kern County, City of Ventura, Department of Defense, Drug Enforcement Agency, Edwards AFB, Fender, Globalstar, Go.com (Disney), Grand Canyon National Park, Helena Laboratories, Honeywell, IBM, Indiana University, Intel, Johns Hopkins University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Las Vegas Sun (vegas.com), Lee College, LexisNexis, Lieber Institute, NASA (numerous locations), National Institute of Health, RAND, Raytheon, SAIC, San Diego State Univeristy (SDSU), San Diego Supercomputer Center, San Diego Union Tribune, Sandia National Laboratory, Skyworks, Smithsonian Institute, Softbank, Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), State of Alaska, UC Davis, University of California San Diego (UCSD), University of Alaska, University of Chicago, University of Hawaii, University of Maine, University of New Mexico, University of Pennsylvania, University of Rhode Island, University of San Diego (USD), University of San Francisco, University of Virginia, University of Washington, US Fish and Wildlife, US Department of Agriculture (USDA), US Geological Survey (USGS), Washington University, Zee Medical, Ziff Davis and many more.

 

 

How We Do What We Do

We aren’t a manufacturer, per se — we are combiners of best of breed technologies coupled with high-quality professional sales, marketing, engineering and support, into a complete customer-friendly package.

Q: How do we do this?

A: OEMs.

We qualify and test products extensively that are available through original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to build our product offerings for us. This is not unlike big brands including HP, DELL, Ford, GM, Target and just about every other name brand on the planet. You may or may not realize that many of the brands you know and love aren’t actually manufactured by the companies selling them. They use other companies to manufacturer parts of products, or entire products for them. These manufacturers are called OEMs.

For instance — Target’s in house brand “Archer Farms” uses hundreds of different manufacturers to create their food products. Big technology companies including HP, Dell, NetApp and IBM have re-branded dozens of storage products from OEMs like BDT, FoxxConn, Overland Storage, Quantum, Dot Hill and Xyratex (Dot Hill and Xyratex are now both Seagate companies).

We simply do the same thing on a smaller scale.

By building solid long term relationships with quality oriented OEMs around the world we provide leading edge (but not bleeding edge) solutions at very cost effective price points. Since we sell direct to end users we also cut out multiple layers of costs typically added for distribution and reseller margins, saving our customers a lot of money.

To ensure quality we bring everything to our headquarters in San Diego for final assembly, testing and shipping. We also provide all the sales, marketing, technical support and maintenance contracts from our headquarters as well.

In summary…

SurfRAID products are high quality, cost effective, turn key and easy-to-use complete data storage solutions backed by nearly 25 years in the data storage business.

Thanks for reading our spiel. We hope you consider using SurfRAID TRITON arrays in your next storage project.

Sincerely,

The SurfRAID Team