Panzura: A New Way to Cloud Management & Business Continuity
After some fundamental changes including a re-organization and selling the initial company (which was founded in 2008) in 2020 to Chicago-based „Profile Capital Management“ its main offering „CloudFS“ has since february of this year a new version „V8.5“. As Wikipedia points out, is CloudFS „a global file system that uses cloud object storage. It overcomes latency to provide users with simultaneous, real-time access to petabyte-size files from any widely distributed location. It is used to migrate or re-platform data, workloads and applications to the cloud, and to consolidate data across multiple on-premises servers and the cloud, without having to refresh existing IT systems. CloudFS integrates with public and private cloud object storage platforms.” Examples for this integration are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud Object Storage, EMC Atmos, Google Cloud Platform, Virtustream, Scality, Cloudian and Wasabi Technologies.
Chris Mellor from the British storage specialist „Blocks & Files“ wrote concerning the presentation of Panzura at the last „IT Press Tour“ in San Francisco that „CloudFS is the underlying global filesystem technology for “Panzura Data Services”, which offers cloud file services, analytics, and governance.” It works with a global namespace and metadata store plus distributed file locking and Cloud Mirroring. It offers a high-availability (HA) capability which is providing redundancy and disaster recovery for file data. The version V8.5 features “so-called Adapt technology providing Instant Node replacement or migration for business continuity and localized Regional Stores for optimized local access to objects and performance”.
Panzura’s chief innovation officer Edward M.L. Peters said: “Our customers operate in an environment that can span virtualization and cloud providers. It only makes sense that they want a simplified way to access, share and collaborate on files no matter what multi-hypervisor or multi-cloud configuration they use.” The actual cloud outage failover is provided through a cloud mirroring feature and it enables. It will deliver enterprise-grade high availability, built-in multi-cloud orchestration, and automation. Peters added: “CloudFS simultaneously places the same set of data in two separate object stores in real time, providing multi-cloud redundancy. If there is a primary cloud outage or security issue with one cloud provider CloudFS can immediately failover data, applications and workloads to a secondary cloud provider, an organisation’s private cloud, or both.”
And he continued: “When you lose access to crucial data, financial losses mount with every minute that passes – and the reputational damage can be crippling. With the new failover capabilities of Panzura CloudFS, you will continue working as if an outage never happened.”
Clouds and storage
CloudFS is one of Panzura’s two core platforms, providing hybrid cloud file services that consolidate multiple Windows file shares and network-attached storage devices into a single, deduplicated, compressed dataset in the cloud. In its previous version CloudFS 8.4 (just released in November 2024) the vendor introduced role-based access control with Microsoft Entra, better class support with AWS S3 support and a new compatibility with IBM’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux KVM. All enhancements are designed to enable businesses to optimize storage and reduce latency for globally distributed teams.
“CloudFS 8.5 Adapt” is adding now new capabilities:
Instant Node: Enables quick replacement or relocation of virtual nodes to minimize downtime.
Regional Store: Creates localized object stores to reduce latency and improve access speeds.
Following Panzura, these functions can be valuable for organizations with remote workforces or dispersed locations requiring real-time access to critical data. A financial services firm – which is managing complex spreadsheets with multiple macros – can for example struggle with slow global data synchronization. That means: Delays, even of just a few seconds, can impact productivity and user satisfaction. CloudFS addresses this problem by offering instant access to up-to-date data across teams.
Panzura believes that amid on-going global technological disruption, geopolitical upheaval, and cybercrime, “CloudFS 8.5 Adapt” provides new and innovative capabilities for hybrid cloud file data like Instant Node and Regional Store for optimized local access and performance.
A special advantage are also the 3 levels of High Availability:
According to PwC (PriceWaterhouseCoopers), 96 % of organizations have experienced disruption in the last two years. And 76 of % them are saying their most serious incident had a medium-to-high impact on their business operations. Resilience is now considered a core competitive advantage and priority by 89 % of business leaders. They therefore want new strategies underpinned by technology.
And Robert Kramer, Vice President and Principal Analyst of “Moor Insights & Strategy”, believes: “Today’s enterprise must anticipate and respond to a dynamic state of ‘permacrisis’ where unpredictability is the new normal. With CloudFS 8.5 Adapt, Panzura is taking another leap forward in unstructured data management, enabling their customers to stay ahead of the curve and come out stronger.”
At the end of 2014 Coldago Research released its “2024 Map for File Storage”. The report analyses the file storage market across 27 distinct companies and 37 globally during the past twelve months. Comprised of three individual maps for Enterprise File Storage, High Performance File Storage, and Cloud File Storage, each map displays vendors in the four categories of Niches, Specialists, Challengers, and Leaders.
Panzura has been named a leader in the “Cloud File Storage Map”, recognized for its execution and capabilities as well as its vision and strategy, and led by the award-winning hybrid cloud file services platform Panzura CloudFS.
This seems to be a significant achievement for Panzura as Coldago Research evaluates the completeness of solution offerings, customer satisfaction, and market share. Coldago writes: “Panzura's performance in these areas demonstrates the commitment to delivering innovative cloud file storage solutions.”
The analysts from Gartner count Panzura to the group of Hybrid Cloud File Platforms: “These platforms are designed with public cloud IaaS as a foundation for all file storage services. Those solutions are typically connecting public cloud storage with on-premises location by deploying edge caching solutions with persistent data centralized in the public cloud IaaS. Some of the solutions are focused on data transfer and data mobility while others are deployed as a hybrid cloud alternative for the on-premises file system products.” (Gartner, Modernize File Storage Data Services With Hybrid Cloud, 25.9.2024)
Gartner sees these benefits: global data access and single name space, cloud scalability and economics of scale and no hardware forklift upgrades: „For organizations that are short-staffed on storage skills, I&O leaders should consider vendor-managed STaaS and its benefits as a replacement for owned, on-premises storage infrastructure.”
