As we head into the holiday season, it’s a good time to recap some of the major things we’ve introduced this year, and in many ways our recent VirtualQ I Transform event was the culmination of a years’ worth of effort in bringing new products and solutions to market.
In November, our VirtualQ I Transform event focused on how unstructured data growth, and unlocking the business value in this data, is transforming how our customers think about data. This event was the culmination of our launch efforts of the expanded portfolio we announced on November 10 – focused on managing, storing, and protecting unstructured data across its lifecycle. You can access all of the sessions and watch at your convenience here .
Most Popular Topics During VirtualQ I Transform
Based on the hundreds of attendees across many different sessions hosted over two days (one European event, and one event for the Americas), here are some of the topics that resonated most and generated the most interest:
Unstructured Data Sprawl: Many of our customers are outgrowing their capacity and looking at new ways to manage ‘unstructured data sprawl.’ We are helping these customers gain better visibility into what data they have, where it lives, and automate ways to move data between edge, core, and cloud environments. The new automated data movement we’ve added to StorNext 7 and ATFS can help in this regard, and were two of the key things we introduced.
ATFS Storage Platform: There were many questions about our new ATFS storage platform, an easy to use, cost effective NAS platform with integrated data classification. This data classification is a major advancement in giving customers visibility into the file data they are storing. With simple queries, customers can gain new insights into the make-up of their file data, where it lives, and then quickly use those insights to drive actions that can be enforced with data placement policies, data protection policies, and storage quotas.
ATFS Trial Download: As we mentioned during our event, for anyone interested in learning more about the ATFS platform, and to start to classify the file data you have today, download a full version of ATFS here . It only takes a few minutes, and you can start to see the impact this platform can make to your NAS infrastructure.
Ransomware Protection: There was also a lot of interest in new ways and best practices to protect against ransomware, and security of data in general. This continues to be top of mind for many of our customers, and we now have options to protect against ransomware regardless of your technology choice, and regardless of the application you are using. We’ve introduced Object Lock to our ActiveScale object store software , we are adding a similar snapshot retention lock feature to our DXi backup appliances , and tape remains the most secure storage with innate air-gapped protection, Active Vault software to automatically move tapes to an in-library vault, and security capabilities like AES-256-bit encryption and multi-factor authentication.
“Forever” Data Archives: Lastly, there was continued interest in the emerging realization that much of this valuable data being created and analyzed will need to be kept forever in a private cloud. Our solutions for this “forever” data archive continue to drive interest, from object storage software with erasure encoding, to RAIL tape, to ways to index and search the content in these archives. Look for some exciting announcements in this area in the coming weeks and months. You can check out the “Forever Archive” white paper here .
Looking Ahead
We are continuing to innovate and transform our own business with a focus on solving our customers’ most pressing business challenges in the areas of video, digital images, and other forms of unstructured data, and we can’t wait for 2021!
Watch VirtualQ I Transform Sessions On-Demand
If you missed the event, watch replays at your own pace to learn more about managing, storing, and protecting unstructured data across its lifecycle.