10X Acceleration & GenAI Readiness with Nasuni Edge for Amazon S3

We just announced the general availability of Nasuni Edge for Amazon S3, which accelerates data ingestion, access and delivery for edge workloads, and I’ve been waiting to talk about this one for a while. Nasuni Edge for Amazon S3 allows data ingest and access via the Amazon S3 object protocol (in addition to SMB/CIFS/NFS) anywhere you need it. That includes ingest/access via virtual machines, physical appliances, or by co-locating within an EC2 instance running in an AWS Region, AWS Outpost, or AWS Local Zone. It delivers the low-latency access to file data in S3 storage that is crucial for edge workloads, including cloud-based artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) applications, through a single, unified platform that covers both file and object data access and protection. And it’s working: In early trials of Nasuni Edge for Amazon S3, one of our larger customers reported a 10X performance increase on data ingestion and distribution in their manufacturing workflows, relative to their previous methodology.

“With Amazon S3 protocol support now available via the Nasuni File Data Platform, Nasuni has unlocked the best of both worlds, closing the gap between on-premises and cloud environments,” said Todd Dorsey, Senior Storage Analyst, DCIG LLC. “S3 support enriches the Nasuni File Data Platform, allowing organizations to meet the demands of increasing data volumes, distributed edge environments, and the need for tighter integration with cloud ecosystems especially at edge locations.”

To be clear, companies have been using Nasuni to tap into the unlimited scale of Amazon S3 for years. This new solution supercharges these interactions, especially for large organizations dealing with high-volume data workloads, latency problems, and bandwidth constraints. Nasuni Edge for Amazon S3 storage affords more workloads, more users, and more applications the power to interface seamlessly with low latency.

Accelerating Manufacturing Workflows

The impact is massive across all verticals, but I’d like to focus on Automotive/Manufacturing in particular. Manufacturing Today recently ran a great piece showcasing some of what Nasuni can do for large firms, and this new solution improves on that. Let’s say you have a plant with specialized machinery churning out widgets, plus all the data associated with the production of those widgets. Traditionally, Nasuni customers implement SMB, CIFS and/or NFS. Users and applications connect to the Nasuni Edge through these protocols, with the file data “gold copy” stored on Amazon S3 Object Storage. In addition to traditional file protocols, Nasuni is adding the Amazon S3 Object Protocol to unify both file and object protocols to the same Amazon S3 bucket in region… at the edge.

AWSome, isn’t it?!

Nasuni Edge for Amazon S3’s multi-protocol (file and/or object) capability tied to high performance with low latency opens the door for customers to modernize applications based on your schedule. You don’t have to delay modernization because of the limitations of your on-premises infrastructure. With protocol bias removed, all files are now easily accessible to the plethora of AWS AI/ML services.

File metadata limitations are expanded with Nasuni Edge for Amazon S3. This is essential for data types that require additional tags for classification or compliance. We have customers with 30 tags on a single object, and we’re making it easier to tag away.

Detecting Product Defects Faster

Back to those widgets. A global manufacturing operation typically has multiple major locations specializing in different tasks. Design, production, assembly, and quality assurance (QA) operations might be centered at different sites. Let’s say you’re manufacturing widgets and continuously monitoring for defects using a camera, microscope, or scanner. Captured 2D or 3D images, along with video files, are automatically ingested through Nasuni Edge for Amazon S3 storage and made available to as many QA sites as needed for analysis within seconds. One large manufacturing customer was able to reduce their time to defect resolution from approximately 2 weeks to under 48 hours.

Connecting to AI/ML Services

This isn’t just about speed and performance, either. Consolidating your file infrastructure through Nasuni leads to cost optimization, infrastructure modernization and simplification, and improved data protection. Plus, with all files consolidated, you can extract tremendous value out of your data with AWS AI/ML services such as Amazon Kendra, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Macie — and many, many more.

All of this is the latest proof that Nasuni is building the best and most scalable hybrid cloud storage platform available in the market today. I can’t wait to see what our customers do with this new functionality for S3 storage.