How to Transform Your COVID-19 Response into Lasting Infrastructure Change

One of the rare bright spots during the pandemic has been the emergence of “good news” threads, newsletters, and even quasi networks like the one hosted by former Office star John Krasinski. Here at Nasuni, we’ve been enjoying good news in the form of public and private testimonials from our customers.

Our customers were able to get their users access to their files at home without spending an additional dollar – and they made it happen in hours, even minutes. They’ve been writing and posting about the impact of our cloud file services platform on their business in the midst of this massive disruption, and how moving their files to the cloud with Nasuni really has allowed for a “Work From Anywhere” model of doing business. This has driven renewed interest among our partners, too, and the companies we’re in close talks with about modernizing their file infrastructure with Nasuni.

With this in mind, there are a few points about our cloud approach that I’d like to highlight. In our focus on scalable cloud file storage, the 50% cost savings relative to traditional infrastructure, and our transformative global collaboration capabilities, some of these benefits tend to get overlooked. So here are five reasons Nasuni is delivering something different on the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery front:

1. Business Continuity, Backup and DR are Built in

Nasuni’s cloud file services platform isn’t just a new kind of file storage solution, a replacement for backup, or a new kind of DR – it’s all of these things. Storage, data protection, and Business Continuity are included. We don’t know when or how businesses will normalize following the COVID-19 pandemic, but no organization wants to pay money for something they might never need again, and our customers are not paying extra for the Business Continuity, work-from-anywhere features they’re enjoying right now. Web access to files is included. Remote management for IT? Included. The Nasuni platform gives enterprises a feature they need today – and might need again at some point in the future – at no extra cost.

Files and data protection should not be major IT concerns right now. Nasuni customers don’t have to worry about how data is going to be backed up or who is going to change the tapes. Nasuni Continuous File Versioning® takes care of data protection automatically.

2. Nasuni Improves Cloud VDI Deployments

My colleague Tom Rose covered this trend in a previous post, but interest in cloud Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is accelerating as enterprises look for ways to keep their employees productive while working from home. But your employees won’t be happy if they have to deal with delays. Nasuni maintains fast, “local” performance by keeping files close to all those virtual desktops, no matter how many VDI farms, pods, or sites you deploy. Our platform makes it easier for IT to manage the cloud VDI deployment, too – and overworked IT teams need all the help they can get right now.

3. The platform is a complete solution 

We’re talking to plenty of companies that are desperate to find a way to empower their suddenly remote, distributed workforces. Nasuni can be a key cog in this machine, as discussed in my previous post. But Nasuni is also a better long-term solution – one that allows you to move away from hardware-centric approaches to a more flexible, cost-effective, modern cloud services infrastructure. Nasuni gives enterprises the chance to address today’s challenges while also modernizing their file storage, data protection, file sharing, collaboration, and management systems – all with one cloud platform.

4. The platform is secure

Nasuni has been focused on strong security since the company was founded. Before anyone was moving files to the cloud in any significant way, our founders recognized that a strong encryption model was essential, and that strong security was critical to our success as a company. That applies to remote and web access as well. Our clients know that their business files are secure and protected, even as their end users are working from home.

5. IT enjoys the benefits

Your IT team has enough to worry about. Earlier I mentioned how Nasuni helps IT ensure employees can work from home and manage cloud VDI deployments, but it goes beyond that. The IT teams at our clients don’t even have to go into the office. They can manage everything through a single online portal, the Nasuni Management Console, which is accessible anywhere. They can remain safely at home like the rest of us and not lose any productivity. Our own IT director here at Nasuni was just telling me how he remotely restored a multi-GB folder that one of our employees suddenly lost – all in a matter of minutes.

6. This isn’t temporary 

Some of the companies we’re talking to think about addressing their current needs, especially the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery aspects, as a kind of technological band-aid. But choosing Nasuni as a cloud file services platform means you don’t have to switch back to your previous infrastructure state or look to cut the costs associated with cloud DR solution in the future.

If – hopefully when – your end users move back to the office, your Nasuni deployment effectively shifts back with them. The platform is flexible. It keeps files close no matter where your users or their desktops are situated.

Delivering Real Value

All of these features are included: the platform delivers storage, data protection, DR, and Business Continuity for one price. What this all adds up to is a unique combination of short-term benefits and lasting value. But enough from me. I’ll leave it to one of our new customers to summarize the benefits of modernizing with cloud file services:

“Penspen’s shift to Nasuni has delivered real value in the last month as we transitioned our entire global workforce to a working from home model without having to worry about disrupting project delivery, global collaboration or productivity.”

Andrew Bond, Director of Information Technology, Penspen