
Investment bank Greenhill relies on Nasuni for fast global performance & ransomware resilience

About Greenhill
Greenhill is a global investment bank with offices in New York, London, Singapore, and other major cities around the world. Founded in 1996, the firm had been a loyal NetApp customer for much of that time. But in 2020, Greenhill’s IT leadership realized that the bank’s traditional file storage infrastructure did not match the needs of today’s users.The challenge
Greenhill’s unstructured data and storage volumes caused slow file sharing across cross-functional teams.
The analysts and managing directors at Greenhill generate unstructured data in the form of documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides, and PDFs. Greenhill keeps most of its data, so its storage volumes have grown steadily over time. Users in different offices often collaborate on deals, so employees were growing frustrated with the sluggish pace of file sharing. Despite his loyalty to NetApp, Managing Director and Chief Information Officer John Shaffer realized Greenhill needed to upgrade to a modern hybrid cloud storage platform.How Nasuni helped Highland Greenhill
Nasuni accelerates global workflows at Greenhill, improving team productivity.
Nasuni addressed Greenhill’s most urgent need: accelerating global workflows. “We had an office in Dallas sharing data with Singapore, and the previous experience was terrible,” Shaffer says. “Once we set up Nasuni, the response from the team came within an hour of going live. The users said it was way better. It solved that issue immediately.”Nasuni ensures fast and flexible access to data worldwide.
With Nasuni, Greenhill can cache file data wherever it’s needed. Although the firm deployed edge appliances at most offices, Shaffer also set up cloud-based appliances. “It gave us more flexibility,” he says, “and if we have to move data into those local regions, it will be a little easier.”Nasuni drives cost savings by reducing hardware needs.
The hybrid nature of the Nasuni platform has helped Greenhill drive efficiency and reduce hardware. “In our smaller offices, we’re trying to eliminate as much hardware as possible,” Shaffer says. “The beauty of Nasuni is that you do not need to spend a ton of money setting up a small office with an edge appliance.”Nasuni’s ransomware protection safeguards Greenhill’s data.
When Nasuni released its ransomware protection service in 2023, Shaffer quickly decided to add it to Greenhill’s deployment. “Now we have ransomware protection fully deployed and enforced, so if we do see something alarming, we get alerts, and we have it set to shut down the offending IP address. That’s a really great add-on,” he notes. “We have other tools in place, but we’re always looking for multiple ways to protect ourselves.” Shaffer also applauds the surgical quality of the recoveries – by quarantining the initial attack, the service limits the number of files that need to be recovered: “I’d rather recover 50 files than 500,000.”Nasuni accelerates granular recoveries.
Accelerated collaboration Nasuni addressed Greenhill’s most urgent need: accelerating global workflows. “We had an office in Dallas sharing data with Singapore and the previous experience was terrible,” Shaffer says. “Once we set up Nasuni, the response from the team came within an hour of going live. The users said it was way better. It solved that issue immediately.”The beauty of Nasuni is that you do not need to spend a ton of money setting up a small office with an edge appliance.
John Shaffer, Managing Director and Chief Information Officer, Greenhill
The Nasuni difference
Shaffer cites the people as one of the benefits of working with Nasuni, especially the Professional Services and Customer Success teams. “The support and follow-up have been great,” Shaffer says. “Sometimes I don’t get back to Nasuni’s tech people fast enough and they start asking me if we’re okay. That has all been fantastic.”Greenhill is cautious about leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) tools at this point given the global and financially sensitive nature of its data, but Shaffer appreciates the fact that Nasuni has made his company AI-ready by consolidating all of its data in a single, secure global namespace. Looking back on the firm’s decision to migrate off NetApp and onto Nasuni and the cloud, Shaffer has no regrets. “When you’re looking to switch platforms, there’s always a bit of fear. Nobody wants to take that plunge and find out that it was the wrong move,” Shaffer notes. “But in my experience, being a customer for three years, Nasuni has only gotten better. I feel really, really comfortable standing behind the Nasuni platform.”
Industry: Financial Services
File data platform: Nasuni
Object storage: Microsoft Azure
Use cases: NAS Consolidation; Global File Synchronization; Data Protection
Benefits: Effortless scalability; fast edge performance at all locations; hybrid cloud agility; ransomware resilience; simpler global management; AI readiness; reduced hardware footprint across all sites