Explain IT Podcast: Nasuni’s Andy Hardy Details How Enterprises Manage Unstructured Data Growth

Recently I had the pleasure of contributing to one of my favorite podcasts, the Explain IT show from Softcat, one of the leading IT infrastructure providers here in the U.K. This was a fantastic opportunity to talk with a pair of true IT experts about one of my favorite subjects: how the growth of unstructured data is transforming enterprise IT.

Along with host Michael Bird and Softcat expert Dylan Foster-Edwards, I covered quite a bit of ground in the podcast, which you should . Here are the highlights.

The Unstructured Data Dilemma

Unstructured data, commonly known as files, accounts for around 80% of data in the typical enterprise environment, and it is growing faster than ever. The boxes we’ve always used to store these files – and the data centers that house this hardware – are running out of space.

Yet no one in IT is sure about what file data can be deleted, or whether it should be deleted at all. For example, many enterprises now prefer to keep raw data even after it has been analyzed in case it can be churned again in the future with even better analytics.

3 Ways Enterprises Manage Unstructured Data Growth

We talk about all this in more detail in the episode, then dive deep into the 3 ways enterprises manage unstructured data growth today.

1. On-premise NAS: This legacy approach requires a large array(s) at your main site(s), a replica for data protection purposes, and a WAN to extend access out to even more file storage systems at your ROBO locations. This approach is expensive, capital intensive, and finite – eventually those legacy NAS arrays will run out of capacity. And even worse, you have to make additional copies of the data – for backup, DR and collaboration purposes – wasting even more capex on unstructured file data storage with this outdated approach.
2. Hybrid: I also review the benefits of the hybrid approach to managing unstructured data, in which some of your infrastructure is on-premise, and some – such as those pesky and expensive secondary copies of your files for backup & DR – resides in the cloud.
3. 100% Cloud: This third option is increasing in popularity, as it reduces costs, increases the accessibility of the data, and enables global collaboration. Whether you choose public, private of multi-cloud architecture, this approach overcomes the disadvantages of legacy approaches, and radically reduces costs and opens up opportunities for greater operational efficiencies and global collaboration, on a subscription cost model.

A few other key topics reviewed: why many CIOs now trust the large public cloud storage providers with their data; GDPR and data sovereignty; and what I like to call the silver bullet of cloud, data protection.

The UniFS^® Difference

The Explain IT podcast is not a product pitch, so the salesman in me tried to behave himself, but the hosts were nice enough to let me speed through how Nasuni solves the unstructured data management problem. With UniFS, the file system moves into the cloud, and the gold copy of every enterprise file resides in object storage. In addition to extending unlimited capacity to all your locations and eliminating the need for separate backups or replica data centers, Nasuni makes true global collaboration a reality. Engineers in London, Kuwait, and India can seamlessly work on the same design file without editing conflicts. But you can read all about that here.

Listen to the podcast, and if you have any questions, send us a note. At Nasuni, we’re always happy to talk about unstructured data and the cloud.