The process to move massive (petabytes) of data into the cloud became easier when Amazon Web Services Inc. created Snowball, a truck-sized server that’s literally on wheels (Snowmobile). Load the data into Snowball, transport it to an AWS data center, and bring it back up in the cloud. But there is one key problem: The process can take what amounts to an extended period of downtime while the Snowball is in transit, an issue which could be ruinous in some transaction-sensitive industries, such as banking.

To solve this problem, WANdisco Inc. (an acronym for wide area network distributed computing) has integrated its Fusion data replication technology with AWS Snowball so that companies can continue using data sets while they are in transit.

“We bring a whole lot of big data workloads, analytics workloads, IoT workloads into their [AWS] cloud,” said Jagane Sundar (pictured), chief technology officer at WANdisco. “The end result is a hybrid cloud environment where you can have an active for-write environment on both sides. That’s a unique capability, no one else can do that today.”

Sundar stopped by the set of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with co-hosts John Furrier (@furrier) and Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara) during the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed WANdisco’s Fusion technology, trends in on-premises computing, and the evolving role of devices at the edge. (* Disclosure below.)

On-premises growth slowing

WANdisco’s Fusion can essentially “replay” the sequence of updates to enterprise data while it is being shipped to ensure consistency once it is uploaded in the cloud. The integration of Fusion by AWS is part of a trend that WANdisco is seeing where customers are taking full advantage of cloud services over on-prem computing.

“What they’re finding is that the growth of on-premises, big data analysis systems is slowing down, because once you get to the cloud, the plethora of tools you have, the facilities that the scale brings to you is just unmatched,” Sundar said. “That’s the trend we see in the marketplace.”

Another emerging trend is a demand for computing at the edge as “internet of things” devices proliferate. After launching Snowball in 2015, AWS rolled out Snowball Edge a year later, which can perform base analysis on device-collected data and send it to the cloud.

The growth of edge technology and the potential for instant replication capability has WANdisco’s attention. “I’m very interested in the IoT use cases, because I see the volume of data and the ability for us to do some replication as being critical,” Sundar said. “That’s where our focus is right now.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: WANdisco Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither WANdisco nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE