As part of an effort to make files easier to manage globally via a cloud service, Nasuni today announced it is adding a global file locking capability to its namesake cloud storage service.
In addition, for the first time the company is also offering a synchronization service for mobile device users along with an upgraded appliance for accessing the service.
Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez says the global file locking capability in the UniFS global file systems extends the control IT organizations have over version 6.0 of the Nasuni cloud storage service. According to Rodriguez, each application accessing the Nasuni cloud can now lock down access to a file to prevent multiple applications from writing to the same file at the same time, says Rodriguez. That capability means that for the first time, a global file system in the cloud has the same attributes of any file system that traditionally ran on premise.
The difference between how Nasuni approaches governance in the cloud, says Rodriguez, is that in the context of the Nasuni cloud service, there is no master node, which means there is also no single point of failure.
Rodriguez explains that the Nasuni appliances give IT organizations control over the specific public cloud service with which the Nasuni appliance is integrated. The controllers in the Nasuni appliances enable IT organizations to have control over which files are stored where in that cloud service at any given time.
As organizations go global, Rodriguez says that they need access to a file system that enables highly distributed teams to be able to work on the same files regardless of their physical location. That requirement is what is motivating Nasuni to also add synchronization capabilities for end users, says Rodriguez.
As IT organizations look to gain more control over the cloud, a rapid shift is under way between relying on simple gateways to access the cloud in favor of controllers that provide higher degrees of governance. Driving the need for those controllers is the desire to not only access cloud files, but also the need to see where specific files are located in a cloud at any particular moment.