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Nasuni’s Chief Product Officer Russ Kennedy discusses how cloud data intelligence can be utilized in new and creative ways.

What does it mean to deliver a technology as a service? The "as a Service" moniker has become an irresistible marketing tag. What we used to call Software as a Service (SaaS) has mushroomed into Web Services, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Services or just Cloud. The challenge is how to distinguish real “as a Service” technology from cloud-wash or lipstick-on-legacy imitations. Here are 6 things to look for in technology that has been architected to be delivered as a Service.

For the last several decades, data has been inextricably bound to hardware. The stewards of data within large organizations were forced to focus on procuring, managing and maintaining the infrastructure on which that data resided. The cloud-driven evolution of capabilities in data storage and protection has rendered much of that once-critical legacy technology obsolete. Organizations can leverage more advanced data services through the cloud and do so without investing in hardware. You can stop managing infrastructure and start managing data.

The data storage industry has evolved significantly in the last three decades, but what has happened in the last 10 years has been another order of change entirely. The maturation of the cloud and the related ecosystem of solutions are transforming data storage from a basic necessity into a strategic technology that can drive business innovation and cost reduction, reduce risk, facilitate hybrid office models, accelerate global workflows and uncover hidden insights.

Open ecosystems and collaborative partnerships matter, particularly with cloud infrastructure solutions. Google Cloud maintains a robust partner ecosystem that encourages companies like file-data-services provider Nasuni to create innovative solutions that run on its infrastructure. Partners can leverage what Google Cloud has built and advanced over many years to offer new, exciting capabilities for its customers. Nasuni's new Ransomware Protection add-on service to its Nasuni for Google Cloud offering is an example.

The growth of unstructured data is accelerating. More people in more places are creating more files, and for organizations that continue to rely on traditional storage and data protection solutions, this is quickly becoming a very serious problem. At Nasuni we hear about unstructured data growth all the time from new and incoming customers, partners, first-time prospects, and IT leaders who switch to new companies and bring Nasuni with them. Gartner has taken the lead in tracking these trends and advising their clients on how to evaluate infrastructure and operations platforms in preparation for the years ahead.

When people in the technology industry talk about big data, they are typically referring to structured data. If you swipe or tap your credit card at a specific location, the information associated with that transaction will be logged and stored in structured form in a traditional or cloud warehouse. The technology solutions developed to store, analyze, and transform this structured data into business insights and advantages have been tremendously successful over the past decade. The industry has a handle on structured data.

For the last four years I've been managing storage, infrastructure, networking, and pretty much anything aside from the help desk for Hybrid Apparel, a creative design and manufacturing firm. Hybrid makes licensed apparel for some of the world’s most recognizable brands and retailers. The company’s main operations are in California, but Hybrid works closely with factories around the globe. Nasuni recently published a case study detailing how Hybrid Apparel is benefitting from their platform, but I’d like to distill that story to four reasons I prefer Nasuni.

Since Q1 2021, Nasuni’s file data under management within the manufacturing industry has grown by 243%. We’ve seen 66% growth in the number of our manufacturing customers, and the last time I checked, we were storing, protecting, and facilitating collaboration of file data at more than 1,800 locations in 55 countries worldwide for the manufacturing industry. This growth is the outcome of an array of converging forces and trends, including a rapidly evolving industry, Nasuni platform enhancements, a larger market shift to cloud services, and the continued threat of ransomware.

As part of the launch of our new Buyer’s Guide to Storing Files in Azure, I connected with Tim Kresler, Product Manager at Microsoft Azure. While Azure is certainly an ideal destination for migrating file data off your end-of-life Windows file servers, NetApp, and Dell Isilon, there are multiple file services solutions in the Azure portfolio, and some of them sound the same. So I talked to Tim about Azure file services, what makes Nasuni with Azure Blob object storage unique, and how the partnership between Nasuni and Microsoft has grown over the years.

Today we announced that Nasuni has surpassed managing and protecting over 100 petabytes of primary file data workloads residing in Microsoft Azure. When I joined Nasuni to manage our Microsoft alliance three years ago, we were at roughly 19 PB in Azure. Today we have more than 500 joint customers with Microsoft, including a top 5 global manufacturer and one of the world's leading social networking platforms. Thanks to a compound annual growth rate of 74% in these past three years, we've blown past the 100 PB mark.

I’ve coached hundreds of companies through the process of assessing their options for storing files in Azure and one thing is absolutely clear. Selecting the right file data storage solution is confusing and time-consuming. Microsoft Azure is a great place to start, but you're presented with three different file storage options within Azure. All three sound similar.  All three count toward your Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment. And all three are available in the Azure Customer Portal. So how can an IT leader be sure you’re taking your best shot? I hope our new Buyer’s Guide is a good place to start.