Starfish Storage Wins “Data Solution of the Year for Research” in 2026 Data Breakthrough Awards Program
Leading Market Intelligence Program Honors Innovation in Analytics, AI, DataOps, and Next-Generation Data Technologies
WALTHAM, Mass., April 16, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Starfish Storage, provider of the world’s most scalable and versatile file and data management platform, today announced that it has been selected as winner of the “Data Solution of the Year for Research” designation in the 7th annual Data Breakthrough Awards program conducted by Data Breakthrough, an independent market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global data technology market today.
Academic research faces a number of challenges, particularly when it is being conducted across international boundaries and involves access to medical data. Researchers look to their data management tools to support:
- Reducing or eliminating delay in publishing data that supports research
- Automating metadata extraction so that researchers don’t have to manually record it themselves
- Timely access to new data for all researchers.
- Tracking and complying with stringent privacy requirements
This year's award recognized Starfish's deployment at Arizona State University's Center for Evolution and Medicine, where researchers on the Tsimane Health and Life History Project needed governed, self-service access to a CT imaging archive spanning more than 20 years. The data had been collected over multiple scanner generations and contained inconsistent metadata. For researchers to find specific imaging subsets required extensive manual curation and often took days or weeks to complete.
Working closely with Starfish, ASU’s IT team at the Center was first able to develop a script for normalizing metadata from multiple CT machines. The Starfish platform was then able to extract and standardize metadata from DICOM files, and create consistent categories across decades of legacy data. The solution dynamically generates familiar directory structures organized by researcher needs: body part, scan quality, reconstruction type, patient demographics, and consent status. Directories are automatically updated as new data comes in. Researchers can now browse and discover data through standard folder navigation without database queries or IT assistance, and the same underlying files appear in multiple organizational views simultaneously. Hours of manual curation have been eliminated, and global collaborators can now access the data independently. All access is consent-governed and auditable, ensuring researchers see only datasets for which they have appropriate authorization.
"Research institutions have research studies that span decades and accumulate a lot of irreplaceable data, but inconsistent file formats, data standards, and metadata annotations, combined with manual curation processes means researchers and collaborators can't find what they need without waiting days or weeks for IT to help locate it. The effort to share the data becomes unmanageable," said Ari Berman, Chief Science Officer of Starfish Storage. "When you are able to utilize consistent metadata to create a self-service data sharing structure, researchers gain rapid access to exactly the data they need, governed by the right consent and access policies, without the standard IT slowdowns. This innovation changes how collaborations work at scale and helps make science go faster."
Steve Johansson, Managing Director, Data Breakthrough commented, “Starfish’s solution offers a metadata-driven approach that removes research barriers while still honoring community commitments, and enabling responsible data sharing at scale. Congratulations on winning ‘Data Solution of the Year for Research.’”
The recognition marks Starfish's second consecutive Data Breakthrough Award, following its 2025 selection as "Data Solution of the Year for Education." The back-to-back wins across two verticals reflect the range of environments where Starfish delivers data management wins at scale, from chargeback solutions that reclaim millions of dollars in storage costs to enabling large-scale research collaboration with metadata-driven catalogs.
The annual Data Breakthrough Awards is the premier awards program founded to recognize data technology innovators, leaders, and visionaries from around the world in a range of categories, including DataOps, Data Analytics, AI, Business Intelligence, Data Privacy, and Data Storage. The 7th annual Data Breakthrough Award program attracted thousands of nominations from across the globe.
For more information on the Starfish solution for Arizona State University's Center for Evolution and Medicine, visit StarfishStorage.com.
About Starfish Storage
Starfish Storage provides the world’s most scalable and versatile file management platform. The platform features an Unstructured Data Catalog (UDC) for indexing and extracting metadata from multi-vendor, multi-PB storage environments, combined with Starfish’s powerful Automation Engine for automating data flows. Starfish Zones provide end users with actionable views of their data. Starfish empowers organizations to gain control of their files in large scale, mixed vendor environments, optimize storage costs, and enhance data management practices. For more information about how your organization can unlock the power of its data, please visit Starfish Storage at https://starfishstorage.com/.
About Data Breakthrough
Part of the Tech Breakthrough organization, a leading global provider of market intelligence and recognition platforms for technology innovation and leadership, the Data Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring innovation and market disruption in data technologies, services, companies and products. The global Data Breakthrough Awards program provides a forum for public recognition around the achievements of data companies and solutions in categories including data analytics, DataOps, data management, infrastructure and hardware, storage, Business Intelligence and more. For more information visit DataBreakthroughAwards.com.
Tech Breakthrough LLC does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in our recognition programs, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with award designations. Tech Breakthrough LLC recognition consists of the opinions of the Tech Breakthrough LLC organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Tech Breakthrough LLC disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this recognition program, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
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