When it comes to data consolidation, Actifio says branch offices need help too

Sure, big companies need to organize and streamline their stored data but so do their far-flung branch offices, says Actifio CEO Ash Ashutosh.

Actifio, the Boston area startup that surpassed the $1 billion valuation mark in March when it closed a $100 million funding round, is now applying its copy data store technolgoy to the remote- and branch-offices of the enterprises it already cultivates.

The Waltham, Mass. claims this technology boils down multiple copies of redundant data scattered throughout the corporate landscape into a single “golden master.”

CEO Ash Ashutosh said the goal of the new product –Actifio Sky – is to help companies bring data their far-flung branch and remote offices — and whatever they’ve put into the cloud — into the f as well.

Actifio Sky is a virtual appliance that runs wherever the data is  and that captures data from production applications, manages the life cycle of that data to create a single copy of the relevant data.

Ashutosh’s take is that companies shouldn’t keep buying more storage systems when they can instead boil down the files and data they have to make them manageable.

This is a point he will debate at Structure 2014 when he takes the stage with Paula Long, CEO of DataGravity (she also co-founded SCSI storage pioneer EqualLogic.)  Long’s stance is there remains a huge need for new, smarter storage products while Ashutosh can’t understand why anyone should ever buy storage again.