Nasuni is adding a data management capability to its distributed cloud-based file services, pitched as a way to get unstructured data ready for use by AI processes.
The File Data Platform provides file access to distributed users from a central synchronized cloud repository based on object storage with added services including ransomware detection and recovery. Nasuni said it was moving into the data intelligence field back in April last year, using software to automatically analyze, index, and tag file data.
Russ Kennedy, Nasuni’s chief product officer, said in a statement: “Nasuni’s File Data Platform consolidates silos of data in a cloud object store and then provides enterprises with the visibility and insight to leverage their data for the next generation of intelligence tools.”
Nasuni IQ provides:
- File Usage Analytics: Track usage and collaboration patterns across users, departments, file types, volumes, and more. Gain visibility to optimize storage, plan capacity, and facilitate capacity-based chargeback.
- Health Monitoring: Monitor system component metrics to proactively identify resource contention and capacity limits so administrators can take preventative measures.
- Forensic Capabilities: Perform historical analysis of file, user, or application activity when troubleshooting issues or investigating information security events.
- Automated Reporting: Prebuilt reports and dashboards for technical and business users that support chargeback reporting.
- Fit for AI Assessment: Evaluate an organization’s data landscape, understand consumption patterns, and begin ensuring the data is AI-ready.
The idea of ensuring data is AI-ready means what exactly? Kennedy said: “As more businesses turn to AI and advanced analytics for a competitive edge, understanding and managing the data feeding those tools will be the deciding factor in their success.”
Nasuni chief innovation officer Jim Liddle told Blocks and Files: “AI-ready means that file data … has been assessed, coalesced, secured, and curated and is ready for either integration with AI services, or integrated into data lakes or data repositories for further context/assessment.”
The Fit for AI concept involves an initial assessment of a customer’s storage silos, a curation phase, and a later consolidation step. Liddle said Nasuni can work with customers to understand their AI use cases, facilitate “a data assessment using best-of-breed-apps, and additionally create a business value assessment to calculate the ROI and business value of consolidating file silos to ensure that it aligns with expectations.”
The curation phase uses “data intelligence tools, some which may be AI-based such as Azure AI Search [and] companies can deeply analyze the composition and utilization of unstructured file data in nested network folders. The new Nasuni IQ data intelligence application, specifically designed for use with Nasuni file data, will also help with this curation phase.”
“The consolidation step is the actual migration of identified file data silos into Nasuni to achieve the global file namespace and single-source-of-truth for the unstructured file data. Nasuni professional services can work with a customer as required in this phase, and we have vast experience of quickly migrating large volumes of data.”
Liddle told us that Nasuni layers an AI aspect onto its existing anti-ransomware capabilities: “Threats such as ransomware attacks can corrupt or encrypt key data sets, rendering them useless for [use] with AI and halting or corrupting AI pipelines. Doing a full security assessment with AI in mind can secure data availability and ensure the continuity in those AI data pipelines. It is also important to consider ‘point in time recovery’ of data, for example, in the event of the nuclear option of a ransomware attack, how quickly can the data flows that now power AI business processes be recovered.”
Nasuni IQ will be delivered as part of the core Nasuni File Data Platform.
Comment
By adding Nasuni IQ data management capabilities, the company now has a differentiating edge compared to competitors such as CTERA and Panzura. The AI aspect gives it more appeal in this era of frantic hype and Nasuni’s channel partners should now have a rewarding time knocking on existing customer’s doors and prospecting for new accounts.
