Quantum Blurs Line Between Local and Public Cloud Storage

5 New Use Cases for the Public Cloud

As many organizations start to come to terms with Big Data, one of things that they are discovering is a need to regularly interact with data stored both locally and in a public cloud. To make that simpler to achieve, Quantum Corp. today unveiled an update to its StorNext file system that can now access third-party object storage, including storage services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google and IBM.

Quantum announced that StorNext can now make use of solid-state drives (SSDs) to store metadata in addition to making it possible to run applications directly on top of a virtual machine that resides on a Quantum appliance. That Dynamic Application Environment (DAE) eliminates the need to deploy a dedicated server.

Molly Rector, vice president of marketing for Quantum, says the provider of storage appliances has decided to integrate its file system with third-party object storage systems running locally or in the cloud to make it simpler for IT organizations to create workflows involving rich media.

“A lot of customers need to be able to ingest a lot video data, edit and then distribute it,” says Rector.

That requirement means IT organizations need to be able to seamlessly interact with massive amounts of data regardless of where it is stored. In fact, Rector says, any decision about where data should be stored should simply come down to how quickly it needs to be accessed and how much capacity is required.

Obviously, regulatory issues might influence that decision as well. But regardless of where that data ultimately is stored, an IT organization shouldn’t have to navigate multiple systems and interfaces to gain access to its data.