AEC companies (architecture, engineering, construction) often deal with large design files that need to be shared across multiple offices or job sites. During collaboration among remote teams, files may need to be locked for exclusive write permission to prevent inadvertent overwriting. When remotely accessing large number of files, the old method of VPN is deemed inefficient due to WAN bandwidth and latency challenges.

Cloud storage solutions such as Dropbox are also inadequate to handle the amount of changed files and file locking requirements. A new category of storage solution has emerged to address this type of application and it’s called Hybrid Cloud File Services. The name implies that it uses a file system that spans across cloud and on premises. This is different from the Dropbox-like cloud-only file system.

To read this article in full, please click here

An increasing number of businesses are moving their data to the cloud to take advantage of the cost, scalability and efficiency benefits associated with not having to procure or maintain significant amounts of hardware. And indeed, cloud data storage can certainly help organizations achieve superior ROI; however, oftentimes when choosing a cloud-only file system such as Box or Dropbox, these organizations encounter significant problems – some of which can actually outweigh the benefits.

These problems include:

To read this article in full, please click here

Anyone that has kept up with this column knows I tend to focus on one storage architecture more than any other – the hybrid-cloud storage architecture. That’s because I truly believe in its ability to meet the challenges of today’s IT storage – ever-expanding data, multiple sites, a need for flexibility and scale, while simultaneously meeting specific performance demands. For this month’s column, I thought we would take a look at how we got to this point and see if this evolution informs where we might go in the near future.

Early days – pre-NAS

The very earliest business storage systems were designed for a world long-gone. One in which a business would be expected to manage maybe thousands of files. Even the largest enterprise would have a storage system to support hundreds of concurrent users, no more. These legacy systems had regularly scheduled down time for maintenance, but it was not unusual to not have access for unscheduled reasons.

To read this article in full, please click here

In our last two columns, we’ve focused our discussion on industry trends that are impacting storage architectures, as well as a few “broad stroke” architectures that may help businesses address the issues those trends created. For this month’s column (as well as more than a few future ones), I’d like to instead focus on solution strategies for improving and modernizing the storage architectures for today’s businesses.

Market drivers for SMB storage

Let’s start with looking at small and midsize businesses (SMBs). By our definition we’re talking about firms with less than 1,000 employees. While that’s hardly FORTUNE 500 territory, firms with hundreds of employees still have a deep need for enterprise-class file storage capabilities. Think design firms, software developers, architectural firms, creative businesses, etc. – all of these SMBs rely on their data and file storage as the lifeblood of their business.

To read this article in full, please click here