BAE Systems Takes Government-Grade Storage to Enterprise

By Chris Preimesberger |
Posted 2014-03-04

BAE Systems supplies big data IT for U.S. government and military deployments, and now it's taking all that expertise to the commercial market.

The Rockville, Md.-based company has reissued its TeraStar big data storage system for commercial users. TeraStar is engineered to meet the next-generation government and military big data storage requirements while accommodating the cost and size needs of small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and cloud-based storage providers.

The TeraStar system's new design enables it to store extremely large volumes of data with minimal operational expense by requiring nominal physical space and using less power than traditional big data storage systems. The system's ultra-dense storage capacity also delivers a competitive advantage to cloud-based storage providers by reducing the overall cost per terabyte of storage capacity, the company said.

To store the same amount of data, other single-system commercial standard offerings typically require twice the rack space, utilize twice the power and require more cooling. In addition, the TeraStar system's design is compatible with a variety of storage media devices, enabling substantial storage flexibility.

BAE Systems developed the TeraStar solution to accommodate the massive amount of data produced by next-generation sensors—more of which will be utilized in the future as the Internet of things ramps up. The company has leveraged this internally developed solution to support sensors such as ARGUS, the gigapixel-plus wide-area persistent surveillance sensor that BAE Systems created for the U.S. government.

"We originally developed the TeraStar data storage system to fit the government's strict cost, size, weight and capacity requirements that legacy commercial products were not designed to meet," said BAE Product Manager Andrew Russette. "Now we're offering this compact and power-efficient solution to commercial businesses at a cost per terabyte that is roughly one quarter of the industry average."