DCIG Best of NAB Show 2025 - Storage Category

Every year in April a trip to Las Vegas lies in wait for DCIG to attend the annual NAB Show. This year was no different. DCIG attended the event for two days to meet with the various storage providers exhibiting at the show. The solutions that DCIG encountered at the show were all considered for the DCIG TOP 3 Best of NAB Show – Storage Category. This year Geyser Data, Nimbus Data, and Storj earned the right to walk away with this award.

Winner #1: Geyser Data

Geyser Data earned a DCIG TOP 3 Best of NAB Show 2025 award for being one of the first independent alternatives to AWS S3 Glacier.

In the past few months, DCIG has extensively researched AWS S3 Standard alternatives. DCIG’s research uncovered over 50 products in this category and plans to begin publishing these DCIG TOP 5 results in May 2025.

However, when researching AWS S3 Glacier, DCIG only found a few solutions that directly compete with it. These include Google Cloud Archive storage and Microsoft Azure Blob Archive (though Blob does not directly support the S3 APIs.)

However, Geyser Data may well represent the first independent provider to focus solely on delivering an AWS S3-compatible Glacier alternative.  Nelson Nahum, who also founded Zadara, recognized an opportunity to provide Glacier-like compatible archive storage. Moreover, he wanted to deliver a Glacier alternative without Glacier’s caveats and unpredictable costs.

AWS S3 Glacier’s Unpredictable Costs

The low monthly storage cost of AWS S3 Glacier represents, perhaps, Glacier’s largest appeal. Glacier’s costs range from .00099 per GB/month (Deep Archive) to .004/GB/month (Instant Retrieval). These storage costs do not represent the issue.

Rather, it is Glacier’s unpredictable metadata and retrieval costs that cause organizations concern. When using either Glacier’s Deep Archive or Flexible Retrieval, organizations must account for:

• Additional metadata charges

• Egress fees

• Minimum billable object sizes

• Minimum storage durations

• Object retrievals

To its credit, AWS provides a guide that details the S3 API data retrieval operations that incur these charges. However, organizations cannot always anticipate which archival data will go “hot” and incur potentially significant retrieval charges. These unpredictable costs associated with Glacier data retrievals give organizations pause.

Geyser Data Makes Cloud Archive Costs Predictable

Geyser Data addresses these unpredictable costs associated with cloud archives. It offers Tape-as-a-Service in the cloud, accessible via S3 APIs. Geyser Data stores all data on tape behind a front-end disk cache. This permits Geyser to deliver a competitive, low monthly storage cost/GB as its more well-known competitors ($1.55/TB or $0.0016/GB).

Two other features also stood out:

• Predictable pricing. Geyser Data differentiates itself by not charging any of the other unpredictable or variable fees listed above. This alleviates concerns that organizations may have about someday – and unpredictably – getting hammered by unpredictable retrieval fees. In so doing, organizations may confidently move forward storing their archives in the cloud knowing they can predict their costs.

• A 360 TB minimum. The only quasi-gotcha associated with Geyser Data has to do with its minimum starting capacity policy. Geyser stores data on tapes that are dedicated to each of its clients. Only organizations with 360 TBs or more of archival data (enough to fill 20 tapes) qualify to use Geyser Data.

https://dcig.com/2025/04/dcig-top-3-best-of-nab-show-2025/