Microsoft Q&A: How Nasuni Fits Within the Azure Cloud File Services Portfolio

March 16, 2023 | Tom Rose Microsoft Q&A: How Nasuni Fits Within the Azure Cloud File Services Portfolio

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. Tim has deep expertise in the cloud and storage industries and we’ve both coached hundreds of IT organizations through the process of selecting the right file data storage solution.

With Microsoft having such a dominant position on the desktop with Windows, Office 365, Exchange, Teams, and more, it’s only natural that file shares – often considered an extension of the desktop because of desktop drive mappings – would be a high priority workload to move to 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. Our conversation has been edited for clarity, length, and the unexpected appearance of at least one dog.

Tom Rose:

Let me start Tim by saying thank you for your time. We’ve been looking forward to this, and I guess I’ll just jump right in by sharing how we see Nasuni fitting in the Azure portfolio. To us, Nasuni with Azure object storage is the enterprise-class offering for customers that need scale, simplicity, and advanced features like ransomware detection, mitigation policies, and compliance reports; multi-site file synchronization and caching across on-premises offices and Azure regions; global file locking; and remote and hybrid work capabilities like VPN-less access, Microsoft Teams integration, desktop sync, and Dropbox-like external file and folder sharing.

Tim Kresler:

I think that fits, Tom. Nasuni reminds me of the classic “pizza as a service” analogy that was commonly used when I first started in cloud. Do you want to buy all the ingredients from different vendors and put everything together yourself? Or do you just want a good pizza? Generally, it feels to me like Nasuni is more like that pizza as a service for customers who are looking to meet their users’ needs without having to make a bunch of complex technical decisions around their implementation or how to make things work the right way. Lots of traditional “big iron” storage providers give you components to build your own solution, but you have to be an expert in their technology and add in third party solutions to fill gaps. And some of the other alternatives don’t even offer ransomware or remote work features. Nasuni gives you a complete solution that you can implement with confidence that covers all of the potential use cases.

Tom Rose:

Well said, and it’s great that you see it that way. This is part of the reason why we do these comparisons like our new Buyer’s Guide, to make sure that when customers are evaluating Nasuni and Azure Blob relative to other solutions like Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files, they’re using the same criteria and it’s an apples-to-apples scenario.

Tim Kresler:

Yes, and I think the fact that Nasuni can do so many more things is why some have the misperception of Nasuni as expensive. It’s not just storage you provide. Nasuni provides this complete set of cloud file services and puts the cost right in front of you, so you know exactly what you are going to pay. There are no hidden fees, and you don’t have to make those calculations about whether it’s worth it to deploy a file server in a new location or buy ransomware protection for a particular dataset.

Tom Rose:

Absolutely. That’s probably one of the biggest obstacles that we face is the misperception that Nasuni and Azure Blob costs more than Azure Files and Azure NetApp Files because it’s two products vs. one product. But when you look at TCO, especially against NetApp, and we add up all the costs and show all the components needed for each, we’re coming out to 1/2 to 3/4 of the cost of other solutions. And for more features.

Tim, you’ve seen our Buyer’s Guide. Who do you think would benefit most from these comparisons? Who should be reading this guide?

Tim Kresler:

There are benefits for a lot of people in the organization, but definitely the IT architect or the cloud architect who is being asked to provide these services for their end users. It’s easy to look at file services in the cloud and say, well, all I need is basic, or all I need is what the cloud vendors are offering. But the truth is there are a lot of features that can improve productivity and improve the way that your customers interact with files in general. These features can streamline the way people collaborate in your environment.

Tom Rose:

What you just said there gets to the definition of what we call file data services. Gartner is now saying that with remote work, ransomware attacks, the need for analytics and insights on your data – given all these things, customers need more than just file storage. They need cloud file services that sit on top of storage that add all that value you just described, including streamlining collaboration, enhancing efficiency, strengthening protection, extending access, etc.

Tim Kresler:

One of the things that’s nice about Nasuni is that you guys have really built a very robust solution that meets the needs of a lot of users and a lot of workflows.

Tom Rose:

Again, that’s good to hear. We also just surpassed major Azure storage consumption, joint customer, and revenue milestones, in terms of our Microsoft relationship. Yet we sometimes see hesitancy from certain customers to consider a third-party solution in the Azure space. Do you see that with other Azure partner solutions?

Tim Kresler:

Yes, some customers are hesitant to consider third-party services inside of Azure, but the truth is we’ve partnered with Nasuni so effectively for so long that it feels like it is a first-party service, especially when you consider the level of interaction, the co-support model, all the things that we’ve done to make it so customers have a really great experience on Azure within the Nasuni platform. I can’t imagine a more tightly coupled, smoother partnership than the one we have with Nasuni right now.

Tom Rose:

That’s fantastic to hear, and obviously we agree. That is partly what this Buyer’s Guide is intended to help customer see. What else do you think our prospective Nasuni / Azure customers should know?

Tim Kresler:

Overall, customers should know that this is a really long-term, well-invested partnership that we’ve spent a lot of time on making sure it works really well for customers, and we’re happy to be a part of it.

Read Nasuni’s Azure Buyer’s Guide to learn about how the Nasuni-Microsoft partnership can enhance cloud file services for any enterprise.

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