Storage and Data Protection News for the Week of February 13; Updates from IBM, Object First, Radware & More

Solutions Review Executive Editor Tim King curated this list of notable storage and data protection news for the week of February 13, 2025.

Keeping tabs on all the most relevant storage and data protection news can be a time-consuming task. As a result, our editorial team aims to provide a summary of the top headlines from the last week in this space. Solutions Review editors will curate vendor product news, mergers and acquisitions, venture capital funding, talent acquisition, and other noteworthy storage and data protection news items.

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Top Storage and Data Protection News for the Week of February 13, 2026

Backblaze 2025 Drive Stats: AFR down to 1.36% across 344,000+ drives

Backblaze’s 2025 Drive Stats report shows its annualized failure rate dropped to 1.36% in 2025 (from 1.55% in 2024), with Q4 2025 at just 1.13% across more than 344,000 deployed drives. Lifetime AFR remains around 1.30%, which Backblaze attributes to careful model qualification and proactive replacement, and the fleet is shifting toward higher-capacity drives—including first 26 TB models—to increase density for AI and “neocloud” workloads.

Read on for more → https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260212236512/en/Backblaze-Publishes-2025-Drive-Stats-Report-13-Years-of-Data-Show-a-Growing-Healthier-Drive-Fleet

Clutch: Consumers Care Deeply About Privacy but Don’t Feel in Control

Clutch’s 2026 consumer data privacy survey finds 90% of consumers say protecting their personal data is important, yet only 55% feel confident in their ability to do so online. Financial information tops their concerns (88%), and 57% say their data has already been compromised at least once, with 88% willing to stop using a company they don’t trust to safeguard their data—putting real revenue at stake for brands that mishandle privacy.

Read on for more → https://clutch.co/resources/consumer-data-security-privacy

Dell Private Cloud Adds Nutanix Support for Multi-Hypervisor Flexibility

Dell has expanded Dell Private Cloud to support Nutanix AHV on Dell PowerFlex now, with Dell PowerStore integration coming this summer, adding a third major hypervisor option alongside VMware and Red Hat OpenShift. The update lets customers scale compute and storage independently on Dell infrastructure, keep familiar Nutanix tools like Prism, and pursue a multi-hypervisor strategy that reduces lock-in while maintaining a consistent automation and lifecycle-management model via Dell’s Automation Platform.

Read on for more → https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/dell-private-cloud-expands-choice-with-nutanix-support/

IBM Next-Gen FlashSystem: Massive QLC Density With Inline Media-Level Threat Detection

IBM has refreshed its FlashSystem 5600, 7600, and 9600 arrays with fifth-generation in-house FlashCore Modules that blend SLC and QLC NAND to reach up to 105 TB per drive, enabling roughly 3.4 PB of raw capacity in just 2U. The redesign normalizes QLC endurance while embedding inline I/O inspection at the media layer for earlier anomaly and ransomware detection, and the systems are built to operate as pooled resources under FlashSystem Grid and FlashSystem.ai for AI-era performance and resilience.

Read on for more → https://newsroom.ibm.com/next-generation-ibm-flashsystem-portfolio

IDrive: Backup for Google Classroom

IDrive has launched Google Classroom Backup as part of its Google Workspace backup suite, protecting full classroom environments—announcements, classwork, rosters, grades, and linked Drive files—rather than just individual documents. The service supports up to three automated backups per day, ransomware-resistant point-in-time restores, multi-domain administration, and AES‑256 encryption for data in transit and at rest.

Read on for more → https://finance.yahoo.com/news/idrive-launches-google-classroom-backup-153000989.html

Object First: 183% bookings growth as immutable Veeam storage demand surges

Immutable backup storage provider Object First reported 183% year-over-year bookings growth in 2025—its second straight year of triple-digit expansion—along with a 193% increase in customers and 215% more transacting partners. EMEA bookings jumped 515%, the Americas grew 125%, and six-figure deals rose 250%, driven by demand for simple, ransomware-proof, on-prem storage that hardens Veeam backups without adding operational complexity.

Read on for more → https://objectfirst.com/newsroom/press-releases/object-first-achieves-183-year-over-year-bookings-growth-in-2025/

Simplyblock Vela: Git-Style Branching for Postgres on High-Performance Block Storage

Simplyblock’s new Vela software turns Postgres into a branchable database, using copy-on-write on its cloud-native block storage so teams can create instant branches—full, isolated environments—without data copying. Deployed in customers’ own cloud accounts with local NVMe plus resilience and autoscaling, Vela adds Git-like semantics (branch trees, diff, merge, promote, rebase) plus built-in security and observability to make Postgres behave like a modern, platform-like data layer for apps and AI.

Read on for more → https://www.blocksandfiles.com/block/2026/02/10/simplyblock-provides-postgres-git-style-branching/4090455

VDURA: Infrastructure Veterans Join Board as AI Storage Demand Spikes

VDURA has appointed former EMC/Dell executive Craig Bernero and AI infrastructure veteran Eddie White to its board as it scales a mixed-fleet, tiered storage architecture built specifically for large AI workloads. The company focuses on combining flash-class performance, intelligent data tiering, and a unified namespace so AI service providers, “neoclouds,” and enterprises can sustain GPU performance while keeping long-term cost and resilience under control.

Read on for more → https://aijourn.com/vdura-appoints-craig-bernero-and-eddie-white-to-board-of-directors-as-demand-for-ai-infrastructure-accelerates/

VersaONE: AI-ready SASE for secure, distributed AI adoption

Versa has released new capabilities in its VersaONE Universal SASE platform designed to support AI at the edge, strengthen data protection, and add AI-powered operations across networking and security. Enhancements include AI-ready edge infrastructure for deploying “edge AI” workloads, advanced data security controls for AI traffic, and AI-driven analytics that correlate events, suppress redundant alerts, and accelerate root-cause analysis across connectivity, security, and user experience domains.

Read on for more → https://versa-networks.com/news/2026/versa-delivers-security-and-networking-innovations-for-the-ai-ready-enterprise/

Expert Insights

Watch this space each week as our editors will share upcoming events, new thought leadership, and the best resources from Insight Jam, Solutions Review’s enterprise tech community where the human conversation around AI is happening. The goal? To help you gain a forward-thinking analysis and remain on-trend through expert advice, best practices, predictions, and vendor-neutral software evaluation tools.

Solutions Review Surpasses 250K on YouTube to Power Unmatched Media Momentum in Enterprise Tech & the Human Impact of AI

Solutions Review has officially surpassed 250,000 subscribers on YouTube, a milestone that’s about more than just the number. This moment marks the payoff of a deliberate, two-year strategy centered on authoritative video, human-led insight, and an early recognition of how AI search engines ingest information, assign trust, and surface sources at scale.

Read on Solutions Review

Insight Jam Launches New “Mesh Lab” to Build a Framework for Work & Learning in the Age of AI

Insight Jam Mesh Lab is a year-long, monthly series of expert-led discussions dedicated to exploring and shaping the next generation of frameworks for work and learning in the age of AI. Rather than reacting to tools or trends, Mesh Lab is designed to initiate a sustained, cross-sector conversation about how human capability itself must be re-architected as AI becomes embedded across education, enterprise, and leadership.

Watch on YouTube

On-Demand: Solutions Review Hosts Pathlock for the Exclusive Session ‘Governing Access in a World of 100+ Apps and 1M Identities’

Modern organizations operate in an identity environment defined by scale and complexity: hundreds of applications, millions of human and non-human identities, and an expanding identity-driven attack surface. At the same time, many identity governance programs still rely on manual reviews, static roles, and fragmented access models that were never designed to operate at this level.

Watch on LinkedIn

Solutions Review is Getting Set to Host Nutanix and Northeastern University for the Exclusive Session ‘Cloud-Native for the AI-Powered, Innovation-Ready Enterprise Masterclass’ on February 19

Join us for the Nutanix Cloud Native Masterclass, an exclusive event for C-level executives, where attendees will receive a Certificate of Completion from Northeastern University, recognizing their expertise in cloud native strategies. In this Masterclass we’ll explore how cloud native architecture is reshaping enterprise IT. Unlike traditional monolithic applications — which are slow to evolve, difficult to scale, and operationally complex — cloud native applications are composed of independent, loosely coupled components. Built on microservices, containers, Kubernetes, and API-driven design, they are optimized for dynamic, distributed environments.

Register on LinkedIn

Solutions Review is Getting Set to Host Radware for the Exclusive Session ‘Securing Your AI Agents to Embrace Their Full Potential’ on March 5

In the hour-long webinar, the company’s VP of Product Marketing will examine the state of global AI adoption, the concerns it brings, and the tools an organization can and should put in place to utilize the full power of Agentic AI while still protecting its data and business. The conversation will also cover several threats, some of which were discovered and published only latterly. 

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Solutions Review is Getting Set to Host Object First for the Exclusive Session ‘Zero Trust: Good, But Not Good Enough?’ on March 12

In the hour-long webinar, two Object First experts will discuss the importance of data resilience in cybersecurity and examine how an evolved Zero Trust approach can empower organizations to achieve genuine data resilience in the face of emerging threats. The event also includes a demo of Object First’s on-prem backup storage solution.

Register on LinkedIn

Solutions Review Editors Launch New ‘Human-AI Ledger’ Newsletter to Chronicle the Human Impact of AI

Artificial intelligence is everywhere—but understanding its human impact has never been more urgent. That’s where Solutions Review‘s latest newsletter, The Human-AI Ledger, comes in. Designed to chronicle how AI is reshaping the way we learn, work, lead, and live, this newsletter explores the soft side of AI—the non-technical, deeply human dimensions that determine whether this technological revolution helps us thrive or leaves us behind.

Sign up now to get a weekly debrief of the latest human-centric news, insights, and commentary coming out of this emerging discussion.

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For consideration in future data protection news roundups, send your announcements to the editor: tking@solutionsreview.com.