Product, Market, People: Why I Joined Nasuni
Chief Marketing Officer Asim Zaheer discusses why he joined Nasuni’s leadership team and the future of enterprise IT.
October 18, 2023 | Asim Zaheer
More than 800 customers in 70+ countries rely on Nasuni’s cloud storage solution today. Yet it’s only the beginning. This is one of the main reasons I recently joined Nasuni as Chief Marketing Officer. I truly believe this company is just getting started. When I began talking to the Nasuni team and evaluating the hybrid cloud storage space, a few things stood out. First, the expansion potential is enormous. Unstructured data is growing both in volume and importance. Enterprise IT needs to consolidate and hold onto data longer to leverage data intelligence and AI tools.
To do that, they must move away from standard (ahem..legacy) storage hardware to scalable cloud solutions like Nasuni. Gartner estimates that consumption-based storage models will triple their stake in total enterprise storage capacity by 2028, and my conversations with Nasuni customers have only confirmed these projections. These IT leaders see the file data platform as an integral piece of their architecture and strategy in the years ahead as they move away from a storage-centric model to a data-centric future.
Nasuni is the perfect fit for this market. Our hybrid cloud storage solution was designed specifically for scalability. The technology has now been validated within some of the largest organizations in the world, including companies with hundreds of locations serving tens of thousands of users globally. These enterprises were on the leading edge of cloud adoption when they partnered with Nasuni, but more and more large enterprises are following suit. They don’t want to continue investing in storage hardware. They want a scalable, flexible, cost-effective service that does more for less. Their users are everywhere, so they want distributed file shares that are available everywhere. They want to support those users with fast performance at the edge and they want their files to be automatically safeguarded against threats like ransomware. Nasuni was built for this technological moment. The platform was architected to scale, and it has combined storage and data protection from the inception. Today, Nasuni does even more, with proactive defense (from ransomware) and rapid recovery capabilities.
This kind of product-market match is rare, and my goal will be driving our global marketing efforts to push Nasuni to the next level as an organization. After spending a decade helping grow Hitachi Vantara into a multi-billion-dollar business, I have a deep understanding of the enterprise IT market, and the immense pressure and unique challenges facing today’s CIOs, CISOs, and IT leaders. Thanks to my last role at Glassbox scaling a company in growth stage I have a very strong understanding of what makes a great company. So, when I was considering the opportunity to be Nasuni’s next CMO, the core technology and market opportunity were undoubtedly enticing, but I was also drawn to the chance to work for an organization that finds, nurtures, and develops talented people. I’m thrilled to be joining a collaborative and driven culture and a world-class and successful team. In addition, I’m excited to be starting at Nasuni along with two other experienced technology leaders. Matthew Grantham, who has more than 20 years managing customer and partner relationships, recently started as Head of Worldwide Partners after serving as Global VP of channel sales for Hyperscience. After working at Nutanix, NetApp, IBM, and EMC, Curt Douglas will be joining us to lead our western sales operations. These appointments come on the heels of Jim Liddle’s promotion to Chief Innovation Officer to lead our data intelligence and AI efforts and the addition of Pete Agresta – who doubled global sales at Pure to $1 billion – as our CRO.
Nasuni is building a team with the experience and drive to execute the company vision, whether that’s our global marketing strategy, our approach to customer service and success, or the continued development of the product, including coming advances in data intelligence. Whether you are an existing customer, an enterprise IT leader or CIO evaluating their options, a potential new hire, or an industry analyst, I hope you follow our company journey in what will undoubtedly prove to be an exciting next few years.