Reading Time: 4 minutes

So much has happened since we bought the company -- the changes can seem a bit overwhelming at times. 

As it became obvious that COVID was going to result in people working from home on a grand scale, our awesome engineers got busy ensuring Panzura’s global file system would be as fast and effective for those working at their kitchen table as at their office desk.

When the time came, our customers sent their people home, where they logged in and got right back to work -- one Zoom after another. 

No changing workflows, replicating files, or putting their data at additional risk of ransomware. Just people being productive. 

We are grateful for all the Panzura team members who worked around the clock to support our growing customer base. And grateful to our customers who stood by us in spite of things getting a bit crazier than either of us would have liked.

Completing the acquisition in May and introducing a new management team when nobody could meet in person came with its own challenges and the way in which the amazing Panzura team handled the change was a credit to each and every individual.   

More Faces. New Values. A Whole Lot of Energy

We led a campaign to bring the best and brightest to our team and were able to draw some unbelievable talent.  We kept focused on our values of relentless impact and bringing your weird to create the one of the brightest, diverse and customer-first focused teams in Cloud. 

Our commitment to radical transparency, a refusal to accept anything less than awesome and the simple philosophy of “do the right thing” became our true north stars and bonded our team together. 

Entirely new teams were formed, including a channel team to execute Panzura’s channel-first approach and a customer success team whose sole and only focus is to take care of the needs of our customer base. 

An alliance team now works alongside and supports cloud partners such as Google, AWS, Azure, IBM, Cloudian and others.

More development talent than you can imagine has joined the Panzura crew… we have had many weeks where 10+ bright cloud engineers came on board at a time.  We aren’t stopping now... our hiring plans in 2021 are HUGE!

In September, we were pumped to announce a 5-year deal to become the official hybrid cloud partner of the New Orleans Saints, moving their game day content at lightning speed.  Wait until you see what we are doing in major leagues - it is both cool and sorely needed. 

Accolades and Recognition

In April, we were awarded our 34th patent for the unique ways in which our cloud architecture allows even large volumes of data to move at speed, with immediate global file consistency.  

We know large volumes of user data better than anyone on the planet - we’ve been working in the complex environment longer than any other hybrid cloud company. It is why our solution scales when others just can’t.  And, it’s how we can get primary user data to where it needs to be in real time, while others make you wait.

By July, analyst firm Gigaom acknowledged us as a leader and an outperformer in cloud-based file storage, and a challenger and fast mover in unstructured data management. 

In November, we were incredibly proud to make the finalists of the UK IT Awards as well as the CRN Awards for Cloud Innovation.  

In late November, we were truly touched listening to IT leaders describe how Panzura had allowed their firms to not only survive, but thrive during the pandemic.   

In their words, we’d made their user data bulletproof, and allowed them to achieve more, faster, and using fewer man hours. These comments drive our team and have spurred innovative ideas to do even more for our customers in 2021.

In a year that had us all wondering what the hell comes next, we played a key role saving jobs, keeping families together at their homes, and letting IT leaders sleep at night.  We’re very, very thankful for the trust that leaders at so many enterprises have placed in us.

Milestones and Records

We’re rounding out this year with records.  Biggest sales quarter ever.  Biggest deals ever. Biggest sales year ever. Craziest year ever.  Most virtual Happy Hours ever. Proudest year ever.

We couldn’t let the year finish without giving a shoutout to our many awesome reseller partners, who not only rose to the challenges of this year, but outdid themselves in providing outstanding support to us, and our customers.  

Our channel-first approach has seen channel deals increase to over 93% of all deals in the last quarter and we couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to work with such a dedicated bunch of people.  They’re good fun, too! 

We’ve also had a blast working alongside our cloud (and private cloud/on premises) storage alliance partners.  

We never get tired of watching the moment people realize just how powerful it is to put their primary user data at the fingertips of the people who need it, the instant they need it, no matter where they are.  And, they can do it using cloud storage (or even on-prem object storage) that’s thousands of miles away from the users themselves.

To our alliance account managers and support teams (you know who you are), thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your help, belief and excitement!

From the suppliers who keep cloud services running, to technology providers, to our new public relations crew, we’re so grateful to each and every one of you for your service and support this year.

Lastly, to the group we are proud to call Panzurians, kick-ass job my people! None of this has been easy, but every single one of you can be extremely proud of your achievements this year. 

There’s no one we’d rather roll with than you… and we’ll be doing a whole lot more rolling in 2021!