WALTHAM, Mass., April 3, 2025 – Metadata-driven unstructured data management Starfish Storage today announced it has won the “Data Solution of the Year for Education” award in the 6th annual Data Breakthrough Awards program conducted by Data Breakthrough, a market intelligence organization that recognizes companies, technologies and products in the data technology market today.
Starfish provides unstructured data management and metadata for files and objects. Its application is designed to help to manage files and objects at any scale, ranging from departmental file shares to the world’s largest supercomputing file systems.
Starfish was initially built for scientific research data management including grant-funded EDU research facilities. Academic institutions use Starfish Storage to help control their storage overhead costs, serve the needs of researchers, and continuously improve their data management practices. The Starfish data catalog provides an in-depth understanding of an institution’s file system, data ownership, file system history, analytics and growth rates. The solution’s automation engine supports easy movement and migration of data, automated workflows and flexible archiving practices. Most importantly, Starfish offers unique features that empower researchers to see and manage their own data.
Recently Starfish showcased its deployment at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). At Harvard FAS it is being used to optimize data and storage management across several hundred research labs. It is also a key part of the institution’s storage chargeback system, generating close to $2M a year for IT to invest in new infrastructure. Raminder Singh, Senior Director of FAS Research Computing, noted, “By giving our users clear visibility and reports into what data they have, how it is being used, and who is using their storage allocation, we enable them to get serious about what they need to keep and what can be moved to cold storage or deleted. From what we have seen so far, they will be able to purge upwards of 20PB of existing data”
“Cost effective data and storage management is more important to educational institutions than ever. Giving IT leaders and research departments clear visibility into what data they have and how much it is costing allows them to both control storage costs and capitalize on the value of their data assets,” said Deena Berton, CEO of Starfish Storage. “We are grateful to accept this award from Data Breakthrough.”
“Starfish delivers the insight and tools needed to manage data in academic research environments effectively.” said Steve Johansson, Managing Director, Data Breakthrough.
“ It offers true innovation by empowering researchers to responsibly manage their own data. We’re so pleased to award them with ‘Data Solution of the Year for Education!’”
The annual Data Breakthrough Awards is the premier awards program founded to recognize the data technology innovators, leaders and visionaries from around the world in a range of categories, including DataOps, Data Analytics, AI, Business Intelligence, Data Privacy, Data Storage and many more. The 6th annual Data Breakthrough Award program attracted thousands of nominations from across the globe.