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Whether you are a game designer, architect, or engineer, your enterprise needs a global cloud file storage solution that works in the real world. The features you need will ultimately determine the solution you choose but there are 3 requirements which, if not satisfied, will cause your organization to struggle in the cloud.

Our most popular whitepaper ever examines in detail how leading cloud storage platforms like Panzura and Nasuni actually work in your environment. We discuss their significant differences in design as well as the real-world functionality and usability that will impact you on a daily basis.

1. Real World Global Collaboration

Your team members need to be able work together in real time without changing workflows and processes. If a file is available for editing, it can be opened. If another user is currently working on that file, only a read-only version can be opened. The cloud file solution must enforce this across an organization’s entire network, regardless of the size of the files or their origination. Failure to do this results in team members overriding each other or creating file versions that must be merged, if they are not lost in orphaned versions stored on the server.

While Nasuni offers global file locking, its cloud-only architecture means each Nasuni filer must be within 60 milliseconds of the cloud locking service to reliably use any advanced locking collaboration features. As a result, file locking isn’t consistently enforced, which can result in significant file versioning challenges.

Panzura’s distributed file locking service is built on a simultaneous hub-and-spoke and peer-to-peer model, which means that when a file is opened, the lock is moved according to where the data is stored in the global file system. As a result, the file is locked for editing across the organization’s entire cloud network.

Vitally important for applications such as Autodesk Revit that allow multiple users to work collaboratively and simultaneously, Panzura supports byte-range locking.

2. Impact on Organizational Speed

Every team member in your organization needs to be able to open files, perform file operations and see changes made by others at the same high speed, regardless of where they are based. And, your cloud file solution must remain fast even as you bring more sites online.

Both Nasuni and Panzura de-duplicate and compress all data at the edge, before transferring it to the cloud. This speeds up the synchronization as well as saving on bandwidth demands.

However, Nasuni’s deduplication is done at the chunk or object level, usually at a default of 4MB chunks. This results in less efficient cloud storage, local cache, and WAN bandwidth utilization.

Panzura’s deduplication is done at the block level to achieve maximum efficiency by ensuring only the smallest chunks of altered data are transferred.

Local filers in the Nasuni solution sync to the cloud sequentially, with each one in the network waiting its turn to transmit and receive data. Typically, the time-to-sync for any local filer is 5 minutes. Subsequently, as the network scales, the time it takes for every local instance to get the latest view of any file increases.

The Panzura solution uses a simultaneous bursting sync that runs every 60 seconds. Every local filer syncs to the cloud as well as to every other filer, giving an up-to-the-minute view of every file across the entire cloud network.

3. Overall Enterprise Value

Determining value should be a clear cut decision based on product capabilities, growth potential, and the unique way a solution platform accelerates the entire organization to achieve productivity gains.

Nasuni offers centralized management of all filers, available from the web with one click, which makes getting started with the platform easy. However, because it requires so much additional time (frequently over 20 minutes) to open files based in the cloud and synchronize any changes made to those files in other locations, teams using Nasuni find it difficult to work productively and collaboratively.

Additionally, the bandwidth required to support syncing data in large chunks has a direct impact on the overall cost of operating this solution.

Nasuni does not support dark sites and is unable to provide service in highly regulated environments due to the architecture of its cloud locking service, meaning that that the service cannot be installed behind a firewall. It also does not offer secure erase, which wipes data locally and in the cloud.

Panzura is priced aggressively with regard to Nasuni. However, the real return on investment for customers is the operational efficiencies gained utilizing the platform.

Even the largest files take seconds to open, regardless of the user’s location. A consistent global file lock, and syncing to the cloud and to every local filer in simultaneous bursts means users can work collaboratively - in real time - without file versioning or overwriting.

Panzura fully supports private secure sites and can be deployed with no public service dependencies. It also supports the ability to securely wipe files locally and in the cloud. By providing a solution that works effectively behind a firewall, Panzura is able to support heavily regulated and secure environment customers.

Panzura offers configuration and management via a single portal. And, its Vizion.ai product provides an integrated, fast, and extensible log monitoring and search solution with alerting capabilities that allow team members to search and audit all filers in all namespaces at one time.

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The needs of each enterprise are different when it comes to enterprise cloud storage and the purpose of this comparison isn’t to show all the possible ways that Nasuni and Panzura differ, simply to begin the conversation and uncover the specific needs that you have in enhancing the ways your teams collaborate.

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