Data management company Nasuni Corp. is refreshing its file services platform today, enabling analytics, artificial intelligence and search on unstructured data as well as new cloud migration capabilities.

The idea is to give more flexibility to organizations that like to use multiple cloud services.

Nasuni’s file services platform is comprised of a network-attached storage appliance that differentiates itself from similar products on the market because it also sends data to the cloud. As a result, the appliance effectively provides unlimited storage capacity. That removes the need for companies to plan and carry out complicated hardware upgrades every time their information troves outgrow internal infrastructure.

Nasuni’s system has other advantages too. The most frequently used data can be stored locally on Nasuni’s appliances. That way, access requests are fulfilled faster than if the data is stored in a third-party data center located hundreds of miles away.

Not least, the appliances can store data on Amazon Web Services and other leading cloud platforms that copy data across multiple regions for redundancy purposes. So if one data center suffers an outage, customers’ information should still remain accessible.

With today’s updates, Nasuni is helping customers to do more with their unstructured data, or information that either does not have a predefined data model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner. The company has created an “Analytics Connector” that’s able to transform unstructured data into “big data.”

It works by creating a temporary copy of file data that can then be mined for insights using a range of analytics, AI and machine learning tools. The connector also makes unstructured data more searchable using tools such as SharePoint Search, Acronis FilesConnect, Cloudtenna and NeoFinder.

Nasuni is also touting its new cloud migration services for Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The service takes advantage of Amazon’s Snowball and Microsoft’s Data Box appliances for physically moving datasets that are too large to be sent to the cloud over an internet connection.

Nasuni is also adding support for the third major public cloud platform, Google Cloud, as well as private cloud storage systems such as NetApp StorageGRID, Nutanix Objects, IBM COS and Hitachi Vantara HCP. That should help make life easier for customers that want to implement a so-called multicloud strategy, the company said.

“Traditional file technologies were just not built for the cloud and businesses need a new model to support today’s workloads,” said Steve Duplessie, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. “Nasuni provides modern file services, built for the cloud from the start, enabling enterprises to eliminate storage silos and backups while reducing costs.”

Nasuni said its updated appliances will be available by the end of the year.

Image: Nasuni/Facebook