Why won't you name your customers?

Because most of them have not agreed to be named, and archive architecture reveals more about an organisation's data than a typical IT reference does. We provide references under NDA, matched to your sector, once an evaluation is serious enough for that to be worth arranging on both sides.

Do you work with technologies outside these three manufacturers?

We integrate with the systems you already run, including existing backup software, PACS, VMS platforms and object storage. What we do not do is claim broad expertise across every storage vendor on the market. Where a requirement falls outside our depth, we will say so and scope around it rather than sell into it.

Architect, not reseller

We decide which data belongs on which tier, then make three vendors' technology behave as one system.

Aban Smart works on archive and retention estates that have to survive a decade of hardware refreshes, format changes and staff turnover. That is an engineering problem before it is a purchasing one.

Speak to a Storage Architect Request an Assessment

Aban Smart designs, supplies, integrates and supports archive technology from QStar, INCOM/StorEasy and DISC. We are not a manufacturer.

Most suppliers in this market sit at one of two extremes. Manufacturers know their own product deeply and have no incentive to tell you where it stops. Volume resellers quote whatever is on the price list and hand you a box. Neither of them owns the question that actually determines whether an archive works in year seven: which category of data belongs on which medium, under which retention rule, reachable through which interface, and what happens when one of those layers is replaced. Aban Smart exists to own that question and stay attached to the answer.

What Aban Smart actually does

Three activities describe the whole business.

Tiering decisions. Not every dataset deserves the same treatment. A PACS study held under a long clinical retention rule, a seismic survey that may be reprocessed in five years, and ninety days of bus CCTV all have different read patterns, different deletion rules and different consequences on loss. We classify the data first and select media second, which is the opposite order to how most procurement runs.

System integration across vendors. Archive software, WORM appliances and optical libraries come from separate companies with separate roadmaps. Making them present as a single namespace to an application that only speaks SMB, NFS or S3 is the work. Our technology partners page sets out what each of the three manufacturers contributes.

Continuity across refresh cycles. Archives outlive the hardware they were born on. Migration planning, format readability and metadata preservation are part of the original design, not a problem deferred to a successor. That thinking is set out in more detail under archive migration and modernisation.

What we deliberately do not do

We do not manufacture hardware, write archive software, or resell general IT commodity. We do not run your security operations, and an archive tier is not a substitute for that function. We also do not offer a vendor-neutral survey of the entire storage market. Our depth is in three manufacturers' portfolios, and outside that we will say so rather than improvise.

Documented deployments

Being honest here matters more than looking busy.

The one deployment we can point at by name is a manufacturer's reference, not an Aban Smart customer: QStar archive software with DISC optical library hardware at Nottingham City Transport, used for retention of onboard vehicle video. It is published by the manufacturers concerned. We reference it because it demonstrates the software-plus-optical pattern working at fleet scale in a real transport operation, and for no stronger reason than that. Aban Smart did not deliver it.

Aban Smart's own client work is covered by confidentiality. Government and financial-sector buyers in particular do not permit their archive architecture to be described publicly, and we would rather keep that trust than trade it for a logo wall. Customer references are provided on request under NDA, matched to your sector and scale, at the point in an evaluation where they are actually useful.

If a supplier's website shows you a long client list for retention infrastructure, it is worth asking which of those names consented in writing.

How to assess us on a shortlist

Suppliers in this category are hard to tell apart from a website. These questions separate them.

Ask	A weak answer	What we would say
Which of these products do you manufacture?	Vagueness about "our solution"	None. Three named manufacturers, described on the partners page.
What is the exit plan from this archive?	"It is an open format"	A named migration path, tested read-back, and metadata mapping.
Who owns the system in year six?	"Support is included"	A defined lifecycle review, media health checks and refresh planning.
Can you cover our GCC sites?	A list of countries and flags	The model varies by country and scope. See GCC coverage.

Our delivery method, phase by phase, is documented on how we work. If you are shortlisting now, an assessment is the cheapest way to find out whether we are useful to you. Request an assessment and we will start from your data, not from a product.

Frequently asked questions

No. Aban Smart designs, supplies, integrates and supports products from those three manufacturers, and we do not describe ourselves as an authorised, official or exclusive distributor of any of them. If a distribution status matters to your procurement rules, ask the manufacturer directly and we will support that verification rather than assert it on their behalf.

Turn your requirement into a defensible architecture

Share the workload, capacity, retention, access, and resilience requirements. Aban Smart will identify the next discovery inputs and the appropriate engagement path.