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Panzura has been named in the latest Gartner® Hype Cycle™ for Storage Technologies1, in the category of Hybrid Cloud Storage. The sector was given a benefit rating of high. The report explores emerging storage technologies and their impact on digital businesses, adoption rates, and maturity level.

According to Gartner, infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders can leverage these insights to build their strategy for delivering innovative and future-proof storage platforms that align with business needs.

In our view, the report highlights the growing significance of hybrid cloud storage as data is increasingly generated and consumed in widely dispersed locations. Gartner sees hybrid cloud storage as an early mainstream solution with a high benefit rating, offering seamless data services across various environments and protocols.

Staying ahead of the curve is crucial for organizations looking to leverage data as a strategic asset. We believe this Hype Cycle can help those planning their storage technology investments to balance benefits of innovative solutions against their maturity. As a part of this evolving market, we believe Panzura’s technology and market strategy exemplifies the shift towards hybrid cloud storage. 

Our solutions are designed to address the growing needs of distributed workforces for file access, security, and visibility as well as data management and mobility from core to cloud to edge. 

The move from traditional on-premises data centers to more distributed data management strategies makes file data access and visibility exponentially more challenging. It’s here that we see the Panzura CloudFS platform truly shine in maximizing productivity for modern distributed organizations. 

Panzura is one of a small handful of solution providers capable of offering a global namespace. This allows organizations to make consolidated file data available to users separated by sometimes vast distances. And, in the case of Panzura CloudFS, they can empower their workforce with real-time access and local-feeling file performance, along with an effective “Ctrl Z” option to undo data damage.

We interpret the report recommendations as suggestive of a focus on platform data services and the importance of choosing providers that offer additional services. To us, this seems to align with Panzura’s capabilities in providing comprehensive storage and file data management solutions across the hybrid cloud landscape.

File data and storage services are delivered everywhere 

The report identifies several strategic planning assumptions that are shaping the future of storage. “by 2028, STaaS-based consumption services will replace over 50% of traditional on-premises IT capacity management, budgeting, sourcing and fulfillment activities, up from less than 15% in 2023. Additionally, “by 2028, over 50% of infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders will upgrade or replace storage appliances with solutions aligned with the principles of enterprise storage platforms.”

One of the most notable trends is the rise of cyberstorage capabilities, with the expectation that “by 2028, 100% of storage products will include cyberstorage capabilities focused on active defense, up from 10% in 2023.” 

The Panzura CloudFS platform is underpinned by a global cloud file system that enables seamless collaboration and data management, making it an ideal choice for organizations looking to modernize their storage infrastructure. With a focus on vendor-agnostic hybrid cloud storage, it facilitates efficient data mobility, security, resilience and interoperability between different storage environments.

CloudFS’s patented ability to provide widely — even globally — distributed workforces with the file performance that’s usually only associated with in-office work when connected to the LAN, is unmatched from our customers’ perspective.

According to Gartner, hybrid cloud storage products are enabling multiple use cases to improve data resilience, life cycle management and operation excellence, while leveraging flexibility and scale of public cloud infrastructure resources.

The value of Panzura technology, from our perspective and that of our customers, lies in its ability to provide high-performance, secure, and scalable storage solutions that align with the evolving demands of business. As enterprises generate and manage increasing volumes of data, Panzura’s technology offers a robust platform for data storage, cross-site collaboration, and cyber-resilience.

Gartner says that, although versatile, hybrid cloud storage is mainly used by I&O leaders for disaster recovery (DR), burst capacity and storage standardization. We note that Panzura provides AI-infused tools and technologies to support disaster recovery and protect against malware and ransomware, ensuring data resilience and business continuity.

Moreover, Panzura’s solutions support the integration of edge storage and data services with cloud resources, optimizing flexibility and efficiency. This enables distributed organizations to reduce latency, enhance privacy and security, enable offline operation, conserve bandwidth, scale easily, and facilitate real-time data processing.

The Gartner report further explains that cloud migration shifts I&O from infrastructure vendors to data service providers, focusing on edge use cases. Edge data and distributed hybrid infrastructure are key to hybrid cloud storage.

Panzura Edge, an extension to the CloudFS platform, aligns well in our view, as it provides a seamless, local-feeling extension of secure file access to any device, anywhere, anytime, without a VPN. This makes it an ideal solution for edge scenarios where data needs to be accessed and processed close to the source.

Addressing key challenges in the Gartner Hype Cycle

The latest Gartner Hype Cycle for Storage Technologies identifies six obstacles to hybrid cloud storage success. Addressing these challenges, we believe we have demonstrated that Panzura is focused on delivering major benefits that are well adopted and well understood by I&O leaders.

Regarding integration, Panzura CloudFS transforms complex, multicomponent, and often multi-vendor environments into a simplified data management solution. It consolidates, de-duplicates, and compresses data from all legacy storage instances. This significantly reduces the overall unstructured data footprint, which can lead to significant cost savings. It also replaces network-attached storage, backup, and offsite disaster recovery processes and storage.

As to performance concerns, CloudFS is designed to accommodate highly latent remote object stores, overcoming limitations that prevent organizations from successfully integrating cloud storage into their infrastructure. It uniquely provides immediate global data consistency and local-feeling file performance across all locations, even when working with challenging applications.

That includes enabling application-specific file locking, and even byte-range locking to work in real time, regardless of the distance between users. This allows organizations to maximize productivity and provide distributed workforces with a file environment that supports work in their own unique contexts.

CloudFS is compatible with a wide array of object stores and is storage agnostic. Panzura provides the flexibility to consume public cloud storage, such as AWS S3 and Azure Blob, or private object storage such as IBM iCOS and Cloudian. It has no cloud-based dependencies, so also supports air-gapped or “dark” sites mandated by some of the strictest security requirements.

In addition, Panzura CloudFS ensures data mobility and interoperability between on-premises infrastructure and cloud services. It provides a single authoritative data set held in cloud object storage, allowing organizations to avoid file replication.

Moreover, in terms of data security, as previously discussed, Panzura offers built-in ransomware resilience and disaster recovery. It provides immutable data and granular immutable snapshots for minute-by-minute data restoration. An AI-infused early detection system for ransomware is also part of the platform.

Panzura in the broader storage landscape

While the Gartner Hype Cycle represents a single source of information to consider when investing in new technologies, it’s can be helpful in untangling the complexity of IT decisions around storage technologies.

While not explicitly categorized as such by Gartner, in our view Panzura fits perfectly into the discussion of Hybrid Cloud File Data Services (HCFDS) in crucial ways. In terms of business impact as defined by Gartner, we can demonstrate that Panzura addresses the six use cases of HCFDS identified in the latest Hype Cycle for Storage Technologies.

Again, Panzura offers business continuity, rapid disaster recovery and ransomware resilience, in addition to allowing for burst capacity through its scalable global file system, and supporting data transport and computation with high-performance, local-feeling, global file access. Panzura solutions also enable global data orchestration and storage standardization across disparate data center locations.

Examining the drivers of the Hybrid Cloud File Data Managment category, our view and that of our customers is that Panzura’s technology is well suited to handling existing and new unstructured data workloads that require hybrid cloud file capabilities. It also addresses the challenges that arise from data generated from multiple locations and public cloud migration initiatives.

While there are obstacles in the HCFDS market, such as performance and scalability limitations, and complexities in maintaining consistent security practices, we again see that Panzura’s platform addresses these with its scalable global file system, built-in malware resilience, and robust interoperability solutions.

We feel Panzura aligns with the user recommendations for HCFDS, as well. Panzura takes advantage of public cloud infrastructure and platform services, delivers additional services like data analytics and life cycle management, and helps build a comprehensive hybrid cloud data services catalog.

Panzura’s perspective on the future

In our opinion, Gartner presents a compelling overview of the dynamic storage technology landscape and the pivotal role of hybrid cloud storage solutions. As these technologies continue to mature, it is our view that Panzura is well positioned to meet the evolving needs of businesses in a data-centric world, and to continue to deliver cutting-edge storage technologies that meet the complex needs of the modern enterprise.

Panzura once played in the realm of only the most demanding and challenging file workloads — those reliant on applications that are notoriously affected by latency. Now though, we believe that unpredictable file data growth, widely dispersed workforces and demands for quality data to fuel AI are rapidly bringing this category into the mainstream.  

As we look to the future, it’s clear that Panzura will continue to drive innovation in the storage technology sector, enabling businesses to harness the power of their data more effectively and efficiently. Panzura remains at the forefront of a data revolution, providing the tools and platforms necessary for enterprises to thrive.

[1] Gartner, Hype Cycle for Storage Technologies, 2024, Julia Palmer, 10 July 2024

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