Reading Time: 7 minutes
Immediate data delivery, without the need for file copies or versioning, is a significant challenge that few solutions can effectively address. However, it is a cornerstone that drives business results in today’s fast-paced digital environment.
Slow file performance, particularly in cloud environments, can result in significant productivity losses and high opportunity costs. For IT and data operations teams, ensuring seamless file access and collaboration is paramount. File locking is a critical feature for preventing data loss and enabling smooth real-time collaboration, especially during tasks like co-authoring documents.
As organizations transition to the cloud and enable distributed file access, maintaining features like file locking becomes vital for preventing data loss and ensuring smooth real-time collaboration, particularly for tasks like co-authoring documents.
It’s important to understand that some of the functionality inherent in Windows File Shares is tightly tied to network-attached storage (NAS). This is a key technical aspect to consider when consolidating multiple localized Windows File Shares and aiming for greater data resilience.
Organizations that have embraced local file storage have found it provides a high-performance file environment. With file data in close proximity to users and workloads, file operations can adapt to the speed of software applications, depending on file size and complexity. A simple Microsoft Word document will open and save almost instantly, for instance, while a large and complex design file may take a few moments, but the adaptability of local file storage remains performant.
In terms of cost, productivity, and efficiency, the ideal scenario is to centralize file storage. As companies experience global growth and adapt to the demands of hybrid work, this allows the entire organization to work from a single data set that can be adequately protected and managed.
Achieving this is one of the most challenging tasks for IT leaders. Distance and latency are linked, and as users, applications, and data become ever more widely distributed, data delivery becomes exponentially more difficult.
Slow file performance is a stealth efficiency drain that takes away valuable time from every user during file interactions. While these delays may seem minor, they add up and can significantly impact productivity. Frequently though, this isn’t obvious because IT teams challenged with delivering file access tend not to be the teams generating and working with file data to the same extent as other users.
As a result, these lost seconds and minutes take on massive proportions when multiplied across the organizations and represent a painful reality for organizations vying for competitive advantage. Quite simply, they are the price organizations pay for poor data delivery.
When file operations start to interfere with users’ ability to do their best work, at the speed of their thinking, the organization faces a problem. Now, employees are no longer able to work quickly and efficiently, leading to frustration and dampening the organization’s speed of innovation.
From a business perspective, the cost of this is threefold. First, there’s compensation with the expectation of a certain number of productive work hours, but productivity is hindered by the available tools. Second, there’s the cost of those tools, which creates friction and does not serve the business or its customers.
Lastly, this takes on even greater significance because it extends far beyond the time directly lost due to slow file operations. The frustration and distraction accompanying wait times impact work quality in each strategic moment, as well as over the long term.
The resulting decline in performance can negatively impact output quantity and quality. This means an organization may never fully realize the potential value employees can offer, individually or collectively.
The same scenario applies at every level of the organization. In the digital age, nearly every organization relies on data. This means that poor file performance is likely to have a negative impact on most business areas. It’s a problem that is crucial to solve.
Organizations that choose substandard file environments fall behind their competitors because they are unable to consistently enable their people to excel. What’s more, high-performing individuals are motivated to do their best work and actively seek an environment where they can thrive, so organizations risk losing top talent to their competitors.
File Data Immediacy is the New Normal in a Hybrid Cloud World
Digital experiences are expected to be fast and efficient. In our personal lives, we’ve grown accustomed to instant delivery of entertainment, meals, products, and services. When we request an Uber, we expect the ride to arrive within minutes, and we don’t have the patience for slow application response times. If digital experiences don’t meet our expectations, we often switch to a competitive service.
Similarly, at work, users have little tolerance for poor file performance. IT leaders recognize that users quickly become frustrated with slow file experiences, which hinders their productivity. This brings us to an important but often overlooked feature of Windows File Shares as organizations migrate from on-premises data centers to private and public cloud storage.
File locking prevents data corruption and conflicts by stopping multiple users from editing the same file at the same time. Without it, users can overwrite each other’s work without realizing it. The last set of edits saved will take precedence, and other edits will be lost. This can result in lost hours of work, with little to no chance of recovery even with IT assistance.
File-locking capabilities have been around since the earliest multi-user operating systems and have evolved to provide increasingly precise user collision avoidance, not just for entire files but also for parts of files.
The simplest form of file locking restricts read-write access to one user at a time, while allowing others to open the file as read-only. The most advanced capabilities enable co-authoring and file collaboration, allowing multiple users to edit a file simultaneously without overwriting each other’s changes by locking the specific section or block within the file they are working on. When Google introduced Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, it highlighted their collaborative features and real-time editing capabilities as crucial for enhancing team productivity.
Microsoft also provides granular range-locking capabilities in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, emphasizing the productivity benefits of real-time collaboration. Co-authoring is accessible with Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Other software developers have also adopted similar features, making file collision avoidance commonplace. However, challenges may arise when organizations transition to the cloud, creating a substantial separation between file storage and the users accessing those files.
Latency continues to cause delays in real-time collaboration. Opening and saving files takes much longer than in the past as we work on more and more complex and larger files, and the response time is often so slow that complete file-locking mechanisms can fail. Additionally, range-locking is ineffective, leading to even more decreased productivity.
Several solutions have been developed to address this issue, including those from cloud storage providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure. However, only a few solutions provide a truly local file experience.
Panzura's hybrid cloud file platform, CloudFS, is unique in its ability to allow distributed organizations to use cloud or other object storage as a high-performance, globally available data center. It is underpinned by the fastest global file system on the planet, uniquely capable of immediate file access and global data consistency regardless of the number of locations or users. That means that users and processes can work with up-to-the-minute file data regardless of when it was last changed and the distance between them, or the user or process that last changed it.
For example, global engineering firm AFRY leverages the capabilities of Panzura CloudFS to enable a workforce of more than 16,000 employees to co-author some of the world’s most complex CAD design files in real-time. The result is a high-performance file environment that allows them to work as if everyone is in the same office although AFRY’s workforce actually spans four continents.
AFRY’s ITOps teams now have exceptional control over their expanding files thanks to patented, granular deduplication and compression offered by CloudFS. This immediate data delivery approach provides a competitive advantage that is difficult to surpass.
While organizations often lose their ability to move and respond quickly as they grow, Panzura CloudFS helps keep them nimble so they can compete with smaller, local competitors. They get a file environment that supports real-time collaboration and co-authoring without the risk of file conflicts.
The CloudFS platform is well-known for facilitating instant file access and real-time collaboration with complex applications. CAD applications and models such as Autodesk Revit and Bentley MicroStation are well known for their complexity and their intolerance for latency, as well as their overall file size and subsequently present extraordinary challenge to distributed organizations. However, organizations across all industries experience real and lasting business benefits from immediate data delivery for files, even when working with simpler applications such as Microsoft Word.
Moreover, an inability to feed AI pipelines with curated data on demand will likely widen competitive gaps. Panzura CloudFS makes it possible to leverage data effectively by placing it where it’s needed, when it’s needed so they can get the full value out of their data as AI moves into every corner of the enterprise.
Thriving in the Digital Age Requires Immediate Data Delivery
Digital transformation and IT infrastructure modernization projects aim to help organizations take advantage of the latest cloud technologies. However, many IT and business leaders feel overwhelmed and confused by the numerous available solutions, particularly when it comes to hybrid cloud infrastructure. When evaluating these solutions, three critical aspects should be considered above all others.
First, the solution should ensure that the organization’s data remains resilient. With Panzura CloudFS, in the event of a breach, cyber-attack, or inadvertent data damage, the organization will always have access to pristine data that can be promptly restored without any loss or unnecessary delay.
Additionally, teams should expect that their hybrid cloud file management will enable command and control over the increasing volumes of data and the associated costs. Panzura CloudFS excels in providing a centralized management system that allows IT teams to efficiently handle large datasets and make storage more cost effective.
Furthermore, Panzura CloudFS’s approach to file services effectively manages the rapid growth of unstructured data through detailed deduplication techniques that remove duplicated data blocks. By leveraging metadata, Panzura CloudFS can point to the data blocks that make up a file, rather than allowing substantially similar files to occupy storage space with redundant data.
Finally, immediate data delivery is crucial for organizations to achieve maximum productivity. The CloudFS platform ensures that data is delivered instantly, eliminating the cumulative impact of wasted seconds and minutes. This instant data availability capability is essential for maintaining high productivity levels and ensuring that teams can collaborate seamlessly and efficiently.
Organizations from any industry that master these key criteria — particularly immediate file delivery across distance — gain a competitive advantage that is extremely difficult for others to beat.
Ready to dive deeper into how immediate data delivery can transform your business and provide a competitive edge? Download the Panzura whitepaper, Driving Forward in the Digital Era, and discover essential strategies for hybrid cloud data management that will help you thrive.
