Why Companies are Switching to Nasuni for Hybrid Cloud Storage
Benjamin Fuller shares insights from IT leaders who moved their data to a hybrid cloud storage solution.
August 7, 2024 | Benjamin Fuller
Change is scary. Especially when it comes to your data. As Nasuni migrates more customers off alternative hybrid cloud solutions, we wanted to understand what’s motivating the senior IT leaders spearheading these transitions. So, my colleague Colin Woods and I hosted a recent webinar with John Stergakis, CIO of SLAM Collaborative, and Bob Stidham, IT Manager at Hanson Professional Services, to discuss why companies are switching to Nasuni for hybrid cloud storage.
1. Efficient Growth
Hanson Professional Services, a prominent U.S. engineering firm, started out with a Nasuni competitor in 2012. But as Hanson’s needs evolved, Stidham found that he wasn’t able to scale out operations as efficiently as he wanted. Spinning up a new office required several days, but with Nasuni he could provision a new location in just 30 minutes. Stergakis, the CIO of SLAM Collaborative, a multidisciplinary design firm, had a similar experience. In the webinar, he summarized his position simply: “We grew out of the product.”
Nasuni makes it easier to expand to new sites, integrate newly acquired companies, bring on new users, or simply scale your overall hybrid cloud storage footprint. Our licensing model is designed to facilitate efficient growth, but this effortless scalability hinges on something more fundamental: our cloud-native file system, UniFS. This gives the platform a cloud-centric architecture that makes it easier and more efficient to scale total data under management, number of locations, users, and more.
2. Painless Migration
The first question from a webinar attendee related to migration, and what it was like to move over to Nasuni. No surprise there. The migration experience is top of mind for anyone considering a switch.
Stidham lauded our process, which finished within his timeframe, and the Nasuni team members who guided his migration. Stergakis said migrating to Nasuni was probably the best technical support experience he has had in IT, and he ended up beating his migration deadline. “With the help of support, it was amazing,” he said, “we got it done no problem.”
3. Reliable People
These comments from Stidham and Stergakis were great to hear, since the professional services experience is near and dear to my heart. That’s how I grew up in this industry, jumping out of proverbial airplanes and implementing technology solutions. As a company, we pride ourselves on building great relationships with our customers during the migration and implementation phases, then maintaining those bonds. Stergakis joked that he got along with his professional services team so well that they all suffered from separation anxiety when the migration was complete.
Stidham talked about how his Nasuni team felt like old friends after about ten minutes, and cited their willingness to respond at all hours. One night, he put in a request and got a call back at 11:00 PM. “Honestly, I don’t think I’ve had that kind of support in any technology that I’ve implemented over the 33 years that I’ve been doing this.”
4. Built-in Security
The other hot topic that surfaced during the webinar’s Q&A was ransomware. This is one of the areas in which we’ve driven real innovation over the years, but it all goes back to our file system, which stores versions as immutable objects in the cloud. Even if tens of thousands of files are encrypted with ransomware, this means you can quickly point back to and recover from those immutable versions. We’ve also innovated on top of that by adding in-line, real-time detection and mitigation.
SLAM CIO Stergakis recalled how he saw the advantages of this technology during his firm’s migration, when Nasuni’s technology flagged a set of encrypted files. “Nasuni detected and severed the network connection to that particular host,” he explained. This stopped the attack in its tracks.
These takeaways represent only a few of the reasons companies are switching to Nasuni, including AI readiness, and the IT leaders at SLAM Collaborative and Hanson Professional Services go into more detail on various other topics. Whether you’re considering a hybrid cloud platform for the first time or thinking about moving off your existing hybrid cloud storage solution, I’d encourage you to watch the webinar, then reach out to us if you have any questions.