File synch, share and collaborator Panzura has developed a Global File System as a Service offering for managed service providers, with New Zealand’s CCL as its co-developer and launch partner.
CCL’s customers can replace on-premises file storage systems with the Panzura GFSaaS. It and other MSPs can offer a fully managed, multi-tenant and automated file-sharing experience to customers with unified, outsourced management of unstructured data across hybrid and public clouds.
Panzura CEO and exec chairwoman Jill Stelfox said: “CCL has been an indispensable partner in ensuring GFSaaS has been engineered with MSPs in mind. Their vision of GFSaaS as a new component of the managed services arsenal, in support of any type of cloud storage, has been both transformational and inspiring.”
She opined: “Panzura GFSaaS is a piece of cake for MSPs and an imperative for the enterprise.” Panzura plans to offer its GFSaaS through the major US hyperscaler marketplaces either directly or via technology partners in the coming months.
Specs
GFSaaS incorporates network acceleration technology that accommodates high-latency remote object stores, and compensates for their slow access. MSPs manage the entire Panzura architecture, comprising the Panzura Interfaces, Panzura Data Path, Panzura API and CloudFS through a single web interface. They can toggle between admin accounts on multiple instances of Panzura GFSaaS, to managing customer accounts and features.
The backend GFSaaS object storage can be AWS S3 and Azure Blob, or private object storage, such as Cloudian and CCL’s Vault2 object storage.
GFSaaS provides for flexible pricing models such as monthly charge or PAYG options. Its tiered cloud NAS architecture is said to be engineered to eliminate costly data bloat—data from all legacy storage instances is consolidated, de-duped and compressed, reducing the overall unstructured data footprint.
The Panzura Data Services system, which offers data analytics, monitoring, auditing and management of unstructured file data within a file system, is used to provide billing management for GFSaaS.
All-in-all this move by Panzura looks well-time to capitalise on pandemic-induced remote working. It brings it into direct competition with Nasuni’s Cloud File Services.
