Customers, partners, and media joined OpenDrives to celebrate Astraeus, the company’s new cloud-native data services platform.

Held at OpenDrives’ Los Angeles headquarters, the event marked the company’s evolution from a data storage company rooted in the media and entertainment industry into a data services company serving all enterprises. The gathering brought together industry stakeholders, customers, partners and media to explore how OpenDrives is advancing its long-term vision for the future of hybrid infrastructure and fully orchestrated data services – one that goes beyond traditional infrastructure and data storage.

Through presentations, panels, and a live demonstration, the event illustrated how Astraeus redefines commonly misunderstood terms like “hybrid”, “data services”, and even “platform” and how it solves industry-agnostic data challenges like breaking down data silos and sprawl, controlling unpredictable costs, addressing AI and other emerging workflows and implementing modern IT and data governance initiatives.

Trevor Morgan, COO at OpenDrives, set the tone with opening remarks that highlighted the event’s goal: introduce Astraeus and validate its ability to transform the way teams deploy, manage, and orchestrate data regardless of where it lives. “Astraeus is a platform built to evolve alongside our customers. It reflects our shared vision: simplify complex data workflows, free data from silos, and manage costs more reliably. Astraeus is our answer for helping organizations turn control of their data into a competitive advantage.”

Sean Lee, CEO, then shared OpenDrives’ evolution from its origins as a high-performance storage company to its emergence as a full data services provider. “This isn’t just another product launch. Astraeus represents a fundamental redefinition of who we are as a company and what’s possible for our customers when they take control of their data.”

CTO Alex Dunfey followed with an in-depth look at the technical differentiators that set Astraeus apart, highlighting its cloud-native foundation, containerized composition, and data services that enable users to deploy and optimize their workflows across dynamic environments. It was made clear that hardware and storage alone can’t manage or make sense of data; that’s a job for data services.

Officially released in early September 2025, Astraeus is OpenDrives’ cloud-native data services platform designed to unify, orchestrate, and manage data and applications across on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments. Built on a Kubernetes-based, cluster-first architecture, Astraeus delivers cloud agility and flexibility with on-premises performance and control. It gives organizations a unified view of all data regardless of location, reduces data sprawl, and enhances security and governance, while improving team productivity.

During the event a Live Astraeus demo, led by OpenDrives’ Product and Engineering teams, showcased Astraeus’ cloud-native architecture, container orchestration, unified data services management and capabilities in action, and an actual transcoding use case. This marked the first public demo of Astraeus, and the audience was given a preview of the cost savings they would experience with Astraeus versus the public cloud.

The afternoon concluded with an open “Ask Us Anything” session led by Michael Wilsker, Sr. Director of Integrated Strategy, who commented: “Our customers’ feedback has been invaluable in helping us refine and further develop Astraeus. Astraeus is a direct response to what organizations need and have been asking for: more control over how they access and use their data.”

As part of this rollout, OpenDrives is inviting organizations to join its Early Adopter Program (running until December 15, 2025) in its search for “lighthouse customers” to experience the platform firsthand and help shape its continued development.