By now, you’ve seen the headlines.

Panzura has made a strategic move that has the potential to redefine an entire market with the acquisition of Moonwalk Universal Inc., an innovative player in the data management sector. This acquisition is not just a business expansion. It’s a calculated step towards our broader market strategy.

We’re well known for our innovative solutions in hybrid cloud storage. Our core offering, Panzura CloudFS, is a hybrid cloud global file system that is increasingly recognized as a unified data engine. It supports large-scale multi-site data workflows and applications in the cloud and has data protection and disaster recovery capabilities derived from its immutable file system architecture.

Looking back, we’ve been at the forefront of the cloud movement since the very beginning – in some ways, we were ahead of our time. Just two years after Amazon launched its cloud service, Panzura created a practical hybrid cloud model that made centralized secure, global cloud file access and management an accessible reality for enterprise customers around the world.

Fast forward to today and our solutions help organizations of all sizes and industries access, manage, analyze, and store unstructured data using techniques in distributed data consolidation, AI (artificial intelligence), and network load balancing. In short, we provide unstructured data mobility, access, security, and control through a single, global file system – native to the cloud – to fuel business innovation.

However, while it has served our customers well in the past, an “inner ring” approach of providing file data management for only the “top layer” of unstructured files – those which are in flight or accessed frequently, and only through the lens of Panzura CloudFS – is simply no longer sufficient.

This is especially the case given growing hybrid cloud file data complexity. IT teams need visibility into their unstructured data across the entire storage stack to gain actionable insights and deliver optimal file data experiences. This is becoming exponentially more complicated with the accelerating use of AI, the expanding threat surface, and the adoption of multiple cloud and on-premises environments.

We began addressing this by building intelligence tools, like Panzura Data Services, on top of our file system. These tools provide advanced capabilities, such as undoing damage or loss of data due to incursions by bad actors or accidents. However, these capabilities have only been available via Panzura CloudFS, which has limited their reach.

Bringing Moonwalk together with Panzura

Every organization now relies on data to run their business and make decisions up and down the value chain. More and more, IT leaders and C-suite executives recognize that file data is more than a business asset – it is the business itself and every company is a data company.

It’s time to extend the powerful functionality of Panzura CloudFS to the next “ring” of data – the 90% of file data for which organizations need visibility, access, and control to take full advantage of digital transformation in their own unique contexts.

And it’s time to ensure that they can see, secure, and scale their data infrastructure across any hybrid cloud or on-premises configuration. Our customers want to manage their data in or out of any cloud with ease, simplify their IT landscape, and make their data and workloads more productive, cyber-resilient, and AI-ready.

Panzura’s acquisition of Moonwalk significantly enhances our file data management capabilities. Moonwalk’s technology enables organizations to manage file and object data across various storage environments efficiently. By integrating Moonwalk’s capabilities, we can provide customers with even greater visibility, security, and scalability across any hybrid cloud environment.

Moonwalk’s technology allows seamless movement of data between different storage tiers, optimizing performance and reducing costs. Panzura’s cyber-resiliency features, coupled with Moonwalk’s data governance tools, ensure compliance with industry regulations and contractual mandates. Organizations can now scale their data infrastructure without compromising performance or incurring unnecessary expenses.

The acquisition will also enhance our role in making data and workloads AI-ready, preparing data infrastructure for AI-driven insights and innovation. Moonwalk will enhance our ability to use AI, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML) to understand file data to extract entities and categorize the content accordingly.

For example, as we look to the future our customers will need even greater capabilities to pinpoint Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and other sensitive personal information as required by GDPR, CCPA, PCI, and HIPAA regulations. Moreover, they need to respond to Data Subject Access Requests (DSAR) based on name or email address.

Our goal is to help reduce security and compliance risk while also decreasing storage costs and assisting with data migration projects. This move aligns perfectly with these priorities and Panzura’s broader mission to simplify the IT landscape for our customers and help them unlock the true value of their data assets.

In fact, as the industry evolves, our acquisition of Moonwalk further positions Panzura beyond hybrid cloud storage towards market-driver status in the Hybrid Cloud File Data Services (HCFDS) category in crucial ways. In the context of the latest Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Storage Technologies [1], in our opinion, Panzura technology aligns well with the leading definition of comprehensive solutions for data services across hybrid cloud frameworks.

The role of Moonwalk in our strategy

The Moonwalk acquisition marks a significant shift in our strategy. It positions Panzura as a platform provider in file data management, extending powerful functionality for a more complete solution.

That means meeting our customers where they are in their digital transformation journey and allowing them to make incremental progress without committing to an all-or-nothing decision in terms of their cloud and data investments.

We looked at a lot of options, including building our own technology. In the end, we chose Moonwalk over other solutions because it provides the most options for users’ data. It was strong in all the crucial categories including reporting, data compliance, and data governance. Bringing Moonwalk together with Panzura also expands our team, adding incredible professionals focused on innovative technology solutions and excellent customer experience.

With Moonwalk, we now have the best assessment tool on the planet. We can take your data, wherever it’s stored, report on it, and then use rules and policies to place data where it should go to ensure adherence to compliance, security, and legal policies.

This includes, for example, identification of sensitive data that resides outside of a desired location and ensuring compliance with data retention policies. Perhaps even more compelling is the use of policies to automatically detect security issues so teams can quickly remediate potential problems. Furthermore, as needs change, policies can evolve, which means data location and logistics can change as well.

The acquisition of Moonwalk is a real and tangible signal of our shift, which has been underway for some time, from a file storage company to a file data management company. It also means we are poised to offer a true platform experience, providing complete file service solutions in and out of the cloud.

Our commitment is to give you the freedom to store your data across multiple clouds, making it easy to get it in and out of any object store you want. That includes supporting air-gapped environments governed by the strictest of security requirements. In doing this, we are guided by overarching areas of concern: desirability, clarity, scalability, and deliverability.

In short, our North Star is to continue making strategic investments that will allow us to meet our customers’ demand for robust file data management from core to cloud to edge. We aim to provide solutions that allow enterprises to innovate new products and services with simplicity, and to effortlessly monetize their data.

With our focus on providing complete file service solutions and pursuing our commitment to desirability, clarity, scalability, and deliverability, Panzura is poised to become an increasingly crucial player in the data management industry.

Empowering the future of file data management

Bringing Panzura and Moonwalk together will allow for the further expansion of best-of-breed solutions. These solutions will empower organizations to manage their data in or out of the cloud with ease and simplicity and increase our global reach to support the needs of customers of all sizes and industries.

As we continue to navigate the evolving landscape of data management, the future looks promising. The integration of Moonwalk technology with Panzura’s trusted solutions is a milestone in our journey. We will offer a comprehensive data platform that empowers our customers to manage their data with unprecedented ease and simplicity, regardless of where that data lives.

As we forge ahead, our commitment remains steadfast – to innovate, to simplify, and to deliver powerful file data management solutions and services from core to cloud to edge. This is not just the next chapter in our story. It’s an evolution in how businesses handle their most valuable asset, which is their data.

The future is here, and it’s powered by Panzura.