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The data centre is becoming the cloud file doorway centre ...

... says cloud gateway supplier Nasuni. Quelle surprise

Interview On-premises flash storage for blocks with files migrating to the cloud; that's cloud storage gateway supplier Nasuni's view of the world.

We thought this was a tad self-serving, but then again it could be true. So we asked Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez some questions to find out more:

El Reg: Do you think on-premises computing is moving wholesale to the cloud?

Andres Rodriguez: Not wholesale, no, because I think users are going to be hard to move to the cloud, and it’s much easier to move data to users rather than move users to the cloud.

I think the cloud is great for crunching data that can be out of band, and there are apps that fall in the middle. Siri, for example, transmits audio bits from your phone to the cloud, crunches the data up there, and then sends back a response that is translated by the device.

But for applications that involve a lot of user manipulation and UI interaction, transmission of data back and forth to the cloud is just too slow. As a result, a fair amount of on-premises computing will have to remain on-premises.

El Reg: Over what timescale and in what stages to you think IT migration to the cloud might happen?

Andres Rodriguez: It’s happening now. The role of the data centre is changing from being the centre of compute and storage to being a high-end access point to higher-end services in the cloud.

Over the next five years, whole pieces of the data centre – whether it’s networking, storage or compute – will move to the cloud, and control units will be left in the data centre. When it comes to the security perimeter and interaction with end-users, the data centre still has the advantage over the cloud, and that’s what these control units will handle.

El Reg: Are your customers moving storage completely to the cloud or parts of it? If parts, which parts?

Andres Rodriguez: Our customers are moving files to the cloud not only because it’s the fastest growing storage segment, but also because enterprises are investing more money in expensive high-performance storage (like flash, for instance) for blocks.

It’s a combination one-two punch. Flash is great, but it’s far too expensive for storing files, which are growing exponentially, so in their search to find someplace else for files to live, they’re turning to the cloud and to Nasuni.

El Reg: Does Nasuni basically present networked storage arrays to its customers, which just happen to be in the cloud instead of on-premises?

Andres Rodriguez: Nasuni is back-upless, bottomless NAS. The file system lives in the cloud and has the ability to be cached and accelerated to hardware or software on the edge. The key innovation is that we’ve separated the file system from any dependencies on the hardware systems. The file system is natively delivered in the cloud.

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