In an effort to expand their brand awareness and catch the attention of top-level executives, storage vendors are offering new management and collaboration capabilities, including remote file sharing and cloud-like experiences. These new features are designed to differentiate themselves from competitors and provide unique solutions for specific enterprises or to meet regulatory requirements.
According to industry analysts, improvements in flash memory and the availability of cloud object storage have made hardware considerations less important when designing a storage stack. Instead, companies are now focused on moving data where it needs to be on an application-by-application basis. This shift in focus has transformed storage from simply having a box to a more strategic decision-making process.
Several storage vendors have recently released new products and features to differentiate themselves in the market. Panzura, a software-defined storage vendor, introduced Panzura Edge, which allows users to create a software gateway for remote access to CloudFS storage. Panzura Edge includes file collaboration and security features, providing a file-sharing experience similar to popular platforms like Box and Dropbox. The vendor emphasized the importance of security and recovery features in file collaboration and sharing tools.
Quantum Corp. also added new collaborative features and single-namespace services to their product lineup. Quantum DXi Cloud Share, set to be released later this year, allows their DXi backup hardware appliance to move and tier data into customer-selected clouds. Quantum FlexSync 3, a data migration tool, can now replicate data into public and private cloud storage. Additionally, Quantum ActiveScale Cold Replication provides object storage replication across Quantum hardware, as well as AWS S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval and Glacier Deep Archive Services.
Ctera Networks, like Quantum, is focusing on supporting hybrid cloud environments with their Ctera Fusion capability. Fusion enables S3-compatible object data to be read and written as file data within the same global file system as traditional SMB and NFS file systems. This reduces the cost of storage for data ingestion into AI or machine learning programs.
As storage products and features become more cloud-like in their use and optimization, analysts believe there is still room for these offerings to evolve. Governance and policy controls are expected to become more important for storage platforms, driven by legal and industry regulations as well as the need for data hygiene to protect against ransomware. Collaboration capabilities are also evolving, with vendors seeking to provide single namespaces and metadata tagging.
Industry experts agree that these additions to storage products are ultimately about increasing brand visibility, not only to CIOs but also to non-IT executives who control buying decisions. Storage vendors hope that investing in enterprise capabilities that require less oversight and management will drive IT decisions. With the pressure on internal IT teams and the decreasing availability of storage administrators, maintaining complex storage infrastructure is becoming more challenging. Therefore, many companies are turning to hybrid cloud and file sharing services rather than building on local hardware.
Overall, the storage industry is evolving to meet the changing needs and demands of enterprises. With advancements in technology and the increasing importance of data management and security, storage vendors are constantly striving to offer unique features and solutions. These innovations not only benefit companies by providing more efficient and secure storage options but also help vendors differentiate themselves in a competitive market and appeal to a wider range of buyers.