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Today’s enterprise operations are almost entirely dependent on data, which makes it valuable and vulnerable in equal measure. It's also absolutely essential that data is accessible where and when required. The right storage solution ensures not only availability but also agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency. As businesses undergo digital transformation, they have three primary storage architecture choices: on-premises, cloud-native, and hybrid cloud storage. Each offers unique benefits and challenges that align differently with enterprise requirements. In this post, we’ll explore the distinctions between these approaches to help you understand which may best fit your organization's needs. 

While this blog will cover on-premises and cloud-native storage, we will focus on hybrid cloud storage, as this may be an offering that is new to the reader. 

When evaluating any enterprise storage solution, consideration should be given to:

Command and Control: This is not only the “ease of management” but the ability of the solution to utilize all available “tiers” or storage to lower costs, and improve performance.

Resilience: High Availability isn’t simply making a copy or bring up a redundant node, it’s ensuring that the fail-over actually works within the SLA. Meeting a RPO (recovery point objective) and/or RTO (recovery time objective) isn’t as easy as making a simple copy.

Data Delivery: Otherwise known as performance or I/O throughput, gets a lot more complicated when involving cloud-based solutions, which may be 100’s of miles/km from the user. A solution is only as useful as it’s intended user’s willingness to use it. When contemplating a move from on-premises storage to tiering or migrating to the cloud, remember that your users are accustomed to their storage system residing in the same building.

On-Premises Enterprise Data Storage

Definition

On-premises Enterprise Data Storage refers to data storage systems that are physically located within an organization’s own facilities. This is the traditional model where enterprises own, operate, and maintain hardware resources like servers and storage arrays onsite.

Advantages

- Control: Full control over data and resources, enabling greater customizability and security measures tailored to specific organizational needs.

- Compliance and Security: Ideal for industries with strict data compliance and regulatory requirements (e.g., healthcare, finance) where data residency and security are paramount.

- Latency: Low latency as data is closer to computing resources and end-users, which is crucial for high-performance applications requiring fast data access.

Challenges 

- Cost and Maintenance: Higher upfront capital expenditure (CapEx) for hardware, with ongoing operational expenditure (OpEx) for power, cooling, and IT maintenance.

- Scalability Constraints: Limited scalability, as additional storage requires new hardware, which can lead to under- or over-provisioning.

- Complex Upgrades: Software and hardware upgrades require manual intervention, increasing the complexity of maintaining an up-to-date infrastructure.

- Cloud Access: Any apps in the cloud do not have access to data housed in on-premises data storage solutions, and if crucial, will need to be extracted, transformed and loaded (ETL) into the cloud. This means replication, which contributes to the growth of unstructured, file data.

Use Cases 

- Organizations with stringent data security, downtime and compliance requirements

- Critical applications with high data access speeds and low latency needs

- Companies with limited reliance on internet connectivity

The Players

The top three on-premises enterprise storage solutions vendors are Dell/EMC, NetApp and HPE. Each of these vendors offer NAS (network attached storage, file storage), SAN (Storage Area Network, block storage), Object storage, archive and All Flash configurations. They cover all of your on-premises data storage needs.

Cloud-Native Enterprise Storage

Definition

Cloud-native storage refers to storage services that are fully managed by cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In this model, storage resources are provisioned and scaled through the cloud provider’s infrastructure.

Advantages 

- Scalability and Flexibility: Cloud-native storage offers on-demand scalability, allowing organizations to pay only for what they use (OpEx) rather than investing in fixed infrastructure.

- Managed Services: Cloud providers handle infrastructure maintenance, including updates, patching, and security monitoring, freeing up IT resources for strategic initiatives.

- Global Accessibility: Data stored in the cloud can be accessed globally, allowing distributed teams to collaborate more efficiently.

- Integration with Cloud Services: Integrates seamlessly with other cloud-native tools and services, like artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), analytics, and serverless computing, enhancing enterprise agility.

Challenges 

- Security Concerns: Although cloud providers invest heavily in security, some organizations remain cautious about data control, especially for sensitive or regulated data. 

- Dependency on Connectivity: Cloud access requires a reliable internet connection, and latency can vary based on distance to the data center.

- Potential Cost Increases: While cost-effective at scale, heavy data transfer or specialized storage can drive up costs in certain cases. Data egress fees can also add to expenses if significant data is frequently moved out of the cloud. 

- Additional Costs: The interconnected nature of the cloud means the cost to achieve compliance for some regulations, the Department of Defense’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Program, for example, can be prohibitive.

- Multi-Cloud: Customers with a requirement for multi-cloud support will either need to replicate the data to the other cloud via ETL or simple mirroring (incurring egress fees) or will need to bifurcate data access based on the local applications to each individual cloud.

Use Cases

- Organizations needing global reach or distributed collaboration

- Businesses leveraging analytics, AI, and other cloud-native tools

- Startups or businesses with unpredictable growth, benefiting from the cloud's scalability

The Players

Each hyperscaler has their own file, block and object storage offering, each providing variable price/performance. Examples include Azure Files and AWS FSx.

Hybrid Cloud Enterprise Storage – Best of Both Worlds

Definition 

Enterprises are increasingly adopting hybrid cloud storage solutions as they seek to balance the flexibility and scalability of cloud infrastructure with the security and performance of on-premises data storage. This shift is driven by a need for more agile data management strategies that can adapt to diverse workloads and business requirements. Hybrid cloud storage provides a "best of both worlds" approach, allowing organizations to leverage the scalability and cost efficiency of public cloud services while maintaining control over sensitive data in private, on-premises environments. This ensures that enterprises can meet strict regulatory requirements and safeguard proprietary information, which is critical for industries such as finance, healthcare, and government.

Moreover, hybrid cloud solutions support business continuity and disaster recovery plans by offering robust redundancy and backup options. By distributing data across both on-premises infrastructure and the cloud, enterprises can enhance data availability and resilience. In case of unforeseen events such as hardware failures, natural disasters, or cyberattacks, organizations can quickly recover operations by accessing their cloud-based data stores. This capability significantly minimizes downtime and reduces the risks associated with data loss, enhancing overall business resilience.

Cost management is another compelling reason for enterprises to move toward hybrid cloud storage. Public cloud services typically offer various tiers of object storage pricing models that help businesses optimize their IT expenditure by scaling resources up or down as needed. This flexibility enables companies to manage data storage costs more effectively, avoiding the significant up-front capital investments required for expanding on-premises storage capacity. At the same time, frequently accessed or mission-critical data can remain on-premises, via a caching mechanism, to ensure low latency and high performance, offering a tailored solution for varying data usage patterns.

Finally, hybrid cloud storage facilitates smoother integration with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics. Enterprises can process large data sets using powerful cloud-based tools (without egress fees, as the object store is local to the AI processing systems) and seamlessly cache the work-product on-premises closer to the users. Overall, the adoption of hybrid cloud storage is driven by a need for operational flexibility, cost-efficiency, data security, and business continuity, making it an increasingly attractive option for enterprises looking to modernize their IT strategy.

Advantages

- Flexibility: Organizations can maintain sensitive data on-premises while utilizing cloud resources for less critical or more dynamic workloads.

- Cost Optimization: Helps avoid the costs of complete cloud migration or maintaining all storage on-premises, allowing enterprises to optimize expenses based on workload characteristics.

- Enhanced Disaster Recovery and Redundancy: With data in both on-premises and cloud environments, hybrid cloud storage provides more robust disaster recovery options.

- Data Governance and Compliance: Sensitive or regulated data can stay on-premises while other data is stored in the cloud, simplifying compliance with data residency regulations.

- Collaboration: Seamless data accessibility across geographies is essential for efficient collaboration. This demand, already accelerating prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, saw a significant increase during the global shift to remote work. In response, many organizations have re-evaluated their remote work policies.

Challenges

- Complexity of Management: Managing a hybrid cloud environment requires tools and processes to ensure consistent performance, security, and compliance across both cloud and on-premises infrastructure.

- Integration and Interoperability: Ensuring that applications can seamlessly integrate across on-premises and cloud environments requires careful planning and, often, investment in hybrid file and data services solutions.

- Data Transfer Costs: Moving data between on-premises and cloud environments can incur costs, particularly with frequent data movement or significant egress needs.

Use Cases 

- Organizations that want to retain control over sensitive data but leverage cloud services

- Enterprises with legacy applications and workloads not yet migrated to the cloud

- Businesses that need flexibility to scale with demand while managing costs

- Organizations seeking more robust and efficient data resilience and recovery options

The Players

The top three competitors in this space are NetApp, Nasuni and Panzura. We will review the differences in approach between these three offerings.

NetApp BlueXP Global File Cache

Overview

NetApp’s BlueXP volume caching is an integrated solution that extends NetApp Cloud Volume ONTAP capabilities to distributed office environments, centralizing unstructured data management and distributed file locking. Leveraging local caching and compression, volume caching optimizes data transfers between cloud and on-premises locations, efficiently managing data across hybrid infrastructures.

Strengths

1. Advanced Data Management and Analytics: BlueXP volume caching delivers automated, AI-driven contextualized tagging, cloud-native integrations, and a suite of data protection tools to support modern workloads across hybrid cloud environments, ensuring scalability, resilience, and operational agility.

2. Access and Permissions: Offering advanced role-based access control (RBAC), privileged access management (PAM), and Active Directory integration, BlueXP provides secure, flexible authentication and authorization across multiple environments, accommodating complex access control needs in diverse enterprise contexts.

3. Enhanced Security and Compliance: The solution provides a comprehensive suite of security and compliance features, including block-level encryption, data encryption at rest and in transit, data immutability, autonomous ransomware detection and recovery, and automated remediation workflows. These features align with global standards such as FIPS 140-2, GDPR, and SOC 2, ensuring robust data protection and adherence to industry best practices.

Challenges

While NetApp’s Cloud Volumes ONTAP and BlueXP solutions offer extensive features, some limitations exist in protocol compatibility and interface support, which may impact data transfer speeds and performance in high-demand settings. Enterprises considering this solution should assess performance needs closely.

NetApp uses Microsoft’s Distributed File System (DFS) to unify the file system across a network of distributed NetApp edge caches. This dependency on DFS restricts end-user protocols to SMB and NFS, which can limit flexibility in multiprotocol file share environments.

Nasuni: File Data Platform

Overview

The Nasuni File Data Platform is a cloud-native, globally scalable file system engineered for seamless, distributed file access. Integrating with leading cloud providers—AWS, Azure, and GCP—the platform leverages object storage to deliver scalability and resilience. It functions as a complete file data management solution, with capabilities such as automated indexing, tagging, and advanced security. Nasuni’s edge appliances ensure local file access with global file locking for efficient data handling and collaboration in distributed environments.

Strengths

Nasuni’s platform excels in advanced data management, access controls, security, and high-volume data handling:

- Data Management: Nasuni’s automated indexing and tagging features streamline data organization and retrieval, crucial for enterprises with large datasets.

- Access Control: Role-based access control (RBAC) and integration with identity management systems enable secure, flexible access across distributed environments.

- Security and Compliance: The platform supports AES-256 encryption, ISO 27001 and HIPAA compliance, immutable snapshots for rapid recovery, and ransomware detection with automated mitigation, providing strong data protection and regulatory compliance.

- Scalability: Capable of handling significant data volumes across cloud environments, Nasuni meets the scalability demands of large enterprises, particularly those managing expansive datasets across multiple locations.

These strengths make Nasuni a viable choice for enterprises seeking a secure, scalable file management solution that integrates seamlessly with public cloud object storage.

Challenges

Nasuni lags on IO and throughput performance, suggesting limitations in high-volume data processing and large file manipulation. Enterprises with performance-sensitive workloads, such as high-frequency data transactions or complex data processing workflows, should evaluate these potential limitations carefully.

Use Cases

Industries like digital media production and architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) benefit from Nasuni’s global accessibility and collaboration features, as long as the files aren’t too large or require fast I/O. The platform’s robust cloud integrations and support for extensive storage management make it ideal for enterprises and multinationals requiring a unified, cloud-integrated file storage solution.

Panzura: CloudFS

Overview

Panzura CloudFS is a high-performance hybrid cloud platform designed to unify and enhance multi-component storage environments by consolidating them into a globally distributed, secure, and resilient file system. The platform leverages object storage in S3-compatible formats across public or private cloud providers, delivering encrypted, consolidated storage through a unique hub, spoke, and mesh architecture that not only enables seamless distributed file access but also supports peer-to-peer communication, real-time data transfer, and global collaboration with advanced file locking capabilities. CloudFS is complemented by Panzura’s suite, including Panzura Data Services, Edge, and Detect and Rescue, which offer complete hybrid cloud file services. These include data visibility, compliance tracking, near real-time ransomware detection, secure file access for remote users, and enterprise file sync and share capabilities for external collaboration.

Strengths

Panzura CloudFS demonstrates strong performance in file delivery and resilience, advanced data management and analytics, access and permissions, protocol support, and security and compliance:

- Data Management and Analytics: CloudFS provides features such as real-time global file consistency, efficient data deduplication, and robust peer-to-peer file locking. Additionally, ransomware detection and interdiction is integrated for enhanced data protection. While automated AI-driven functionalities are available, such as ransomware detection, more advanced AI-based contextual tagging would improve these capabilities.

- Access and Permissions: CloudFS integrates with Active Directory to offer detailed user permissions, file sharing control, two-factor authentication, and encryption. It supports ACLs, RBAC, and Single Sign-On with MFA. 

- Protocol Support: Panzura supports critical protocols like SMB3 and NFSv4.1, ensuring smooth integration with existing IT infrastructures. A distinguishing feature is byte-range locking, allowing concurrent file editing without conflict.

- Security and Compliance: With AES-256 encryption, FIPS 140-2 and now FIPS 140-3 certification, and data immutability through read-only snapshots, CloudFS provides robust protection. The Detect and Rescue extension enables ransomware alerting and automatic user interdiction, reducing attack impact.

These strengths position CloudFS as a versatile and secure solution for enterprises needing resilient global file management.

Use Cases

Panzura CloudFS is a robust solution with broad applicability across industries. It serves large-scale enterprises and multinational organizations moving file data to the cloud. In particular, it is ideal for organizations requiring secure global file collaboration, disaster recovery, and extensive file-sharing capabilities. CloudFS’s byte-range locking and support for complex workflows such as CAD make it particularly well-suited for sectors like architecture, engineering, construction (AEC), and media and entertainment, where real-time collaboration and secure file management are essential.

These capabilities allow organizations across an array of sectors to make cloud and other centralized object storage behave as if file storage is still local. Effectively, distributed organizations can work as if they're all under the same roof, with local-feeling file operations including file and range locking for real-time co-authoring without file collisions and versioning.

Key Factors in Choosing a Storage Strategy

Choosing the right enterprise-grade storage strategy depends on a variety of factors:

1. Data Sensitivity and Compliance: On-premises or hybrid cloud storage may be best for organizations in regulated industries that must maintain tight control over data.

2. Scalability Requirements: Cloud-native storage provides unmatched scalability, but hybrid approaches offer a balance when on-premises resources are also essential.

3. Performance and Latency Needs: On-premises solutions may be required for low-latency applications, though cloud providers increasingly offer solutions with edge computing to help address these needs.

4. Cost Efficiency: A cloud-native approach may reduce CapEx but increase OpEx over time, depending on data transfer and storage volume. Hybrid solutions often help balance these costs.

5. Disaster Recovery: Hybrid or cloud-native storage solutions offer flexibility in disaster recovery, with options like geo-redundancy and automated backups across regions.

Conclusion

Each storage strategy brings unique strengths to the table, and the choice often comes down to aligning these strengths with business needs and goals. On-premises solutions excel in control and low latency, cloud-native storage brings scalability and managed services, while hybrid cloud storage offers a balance that blends both worlds.

Often, hybrid cloud solutions are priced by data volume and yet their capabilities and subsequent value extend far beyond data storage. Evaluating your current and future data needs, as well as budgetary constraints, can help determine the best-fit storage approach for your organization. Additionally, calculating your total cost of ownership across the entire solution can provide a more accurate picture than viewing a cost per terabyte.

For a deeper dive into how Panzura stacks up to the various hybrid cloud and cloud-native enterprise storage offerings, check out our comparison pages.