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Panzura CEO Patrick Harr said he suspects the COVID-19 outbreak will forever change the way IT responds to disasters.

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, Harr said he sensed an uptick in customers looking to expand their abilities to enable employees to work from anywhere at any time. That has helped the cloud file storage vendor's sales over the past year, and the pandemic is accelerating that trend.

Panzura claims subscription revenue for its cloud file system and data management software grew 237% and enterprise customers more than doubled their global cloud data capacity since last year. Now Harr says Panzura's current quarter could be its best ever, despite ominous economic signs.

Harr said customers are expanding and new prospects are accelerating deployments of Panzura Freedom software to help their employees collaborate, as many adopt work-from-home policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Panzura struck its largest deal in history about a month ago with a large engineering firm, according to Harr.

"Certainly this pandemic has highlighted the need for business continuity," Harr said in an interview with TechTarget. "Clearly, we're focused on helping our customers work through this pandemic, and I pray that we get through this with as minimal disruption as possible to their lives."

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, Panzura began offering a free Cloud Filer software instance for six months in either AWS or Microsoft Azure for customers that need to provide remote workers with fast access to data. Harr discussed other ways in which he expects the pandemic will have a profound impact on the storage, IT and business continuity planning. It may even, he said, "drive the final nail in the coffin of a pure data center model."

Are customer requests different than what you heard prior to the pandemic? Or, are you simply seeing an escalation?

Patrick Harr: It's more an escalation of this sense of urgency to ensure that employees can work from anywhere at any time. You used to have your users and your employees basically go to the data for the application, and it was in the data center in the office. In global cloud file systems, we'll bring the data to the user at the ultimate edge. You have the applications and the data to be able to successfully run in a remote scenario. We also have a mobile client that ties directly into the global cloud file system. We've always had the capability to do real-time collaboration and global file locking in the global file system, and now with the mobile client, you can do check-in and checkout of files as well. There's full disconnect, meaning no bandwidth. So, it gives complete uninterrupted business continuity. And, if that bandwidth comes back, obviously, you can check back in. We've spent a lot of time particularly this last year focused on business continuity and cloud mirroring and the mobile client. We're just now releasing that in full force.

Much like 9/11 did, this pandemic will forever change business continuity planning and how we have to deal with a crisis. Patrick HarrCEO, Panzura

What was very interesting about two to perhaps three weeks ago is this started becoming a board-level conversation, particularly for more leading-edge kind of planners. It was almost a seismic shift of how it went from IT-level conversations to board-level conversations in terms of what needs to be done. Much like 9/11 did, this pandemic will forever change business continuity planning and how we have to deal with a crisis.

In what ways do you think the COVID-19 pandemic will change IT?

Harr: Number one, I think you're going to see full SaaS-ification of the world -- a significant acceleration of software as a service (SaaS)-based services. Obviously, we've already seen a strong push of that. But I think this will further cement that as a way of adopting and consuming applications, business processes and data services. Second, I think you will see even further adoption of public cloud in particular, given the inherent natures of how they're built and scale, to handle significant peak loads of demand and bandwidth, etc.

The second piece goes into business continuity. I'll draw the analogy of moving from a data center 30 miles or kilometers away, which is what happened after 9/11. It was more data center to data services continuity. As we've had mobility come out, and now with this crisis, it will come down to not just data center to data center, or last-mile business continuity planning. I think it will become last block and last user, up to that remote worker at any and all times. This is somewhat counter to a couple of years ago when Yahoo, etc., was calling for everyone to come back into the office. This will change some of the dynamics of the workforce. I think you will actually encourage, not discourage, more remote working. I think that in turn will change some of the business practices for how people work together. Video will become more important technology. We're going to have sea changes that will live with us for a long time.

Has Panzura's customer base remained consistent across vertical industries, or has it changed?

Harr: When I joined the company four years ago, we were strong in engineering and manufacturing, building around the notion of helping large-scale design teams get projects out on time and on budget. Now that trend has continued into other verticals: financial services, where we brought on a very large Wall Street bank, some of the largest healthcare companies, media and entertainment, and subsets around gaming, with more collaborative team design. Software development is underpinning that. We have some large chip manufacturers that have distributed global teams.

The second key thing that's helped us expand across vertical segments is consolidation and the migration to the cloud. I think the pandemic is going to further accelerate, if not drive the final nail in the coffin of a pure data center model. Because companies are embracing cloud-first and cloud-native strategies, that's certainly benefited what we've done with them, because a majority of applications are file-based. One of the key things we do is translate files, which is NFS and SMB, into object, which is S3-compliant cloud storage. We enable them to take advantage of the deep, cheap, scalable, resilient object storage but still provide high-performance, file-based NFS and SMB services. What we find is the majority of customers need to transition their file-based applications into a cloud-based world without rewrite.

Where would you say your customers are on the continuum of on-premises versus hybrid versus public cloud?

Harr: Roughly 15% of our customers are in a pure private cloud, where they need what's called dark-site support, meaning no communication through the firewall. These are the [companies that are] heavily regulated, compliant, secure. We do have some three-letter acronym government agencies and banks that would fit that profile. The vast majority -- about 75% of our customers -- are hybrid. They are shifting into a public-cloud paradigm. High-performance access to data and applications at the edge, whether in a data center or an office, is a very significant portion of our business. We've certainly seen hybrid is real. That's what we run in a strong hub-and-spoke context. What's interesting is that the pure public grew significantly last year, meaning they're running just pure in-cloud instances. As an example, a large tax preparer is running us in Amazon [U.S.] East and West as well as in Europe to provide the same global namespace and single common access to the data for the application.

Do the pure public-cloud customers tend to be small or new companies?

Harr: There are newer companies that are more born in the cloud. There's some that are container-based, where they need NFS mounts. The second category is mid to large companies that are getting out of the data center business. They have a lot of applications that are file-based, and they simply need to get them in that public cloud context without rewrite.

Who are your main competitors these days?

Harr: There's still a large swath of status quo -- the NetApps, Dell EMC Isilons and Unity, more traditional file-based storage. They rely on multiple copies of data everywhere, replication, different pieces of backup software. There are so many different things inside that stack, which becomes pretty costly and complex.

Probably our biggest direct competitor is Nasuni. We were designed at the outset for the enterprise, whereas they were designed more from a small, medium business kind of context and from a backup/archive perspective as opposed to primary files. They've really pushed to try to catch up, adding cloud locking, et cetera.

The final area is the public clouds themselves, in terms of offerings and file services. If you are a customer that is comfortable with being in a single stack, [such as] all in Amazon, there's something to be said for having everything in one location and using all their services. I'm a firm believer in multiple clouds, including hybrid and data center.

Read more here:
Panzura CEO: IT will never be same after COVID-19 pandemic - TechTarget

Historically, enterprises have been reluctant to migrate applications and data to the cloud due to security concerns. Executives are most worried about exposing their communications. However, when I asked these same executives where they store their sensitive emails, texts, and direct messages, the answer was almost universally "in the cloud."

In fact,moving your data to a reputable cloud hosting service such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azureprovides a level of security that can't be duplicated on site. That's because most organizations simply don't have the financial or staffing resources to provide the same security benefits aslarge cloud services providers can.

Here are the other ways that cloud-based data storage solutions provide better security than those housed on premises.

When you move to the cloud, data is stored in multiple data centers that are geo-independent, with redundancy implemented throughout the system. Your data doesn't just get copied to one data center;it gets distributed to multiple data centersso if onegoes down, your data will fail over to another automatically.

Large cloud providers also protect availability through virtualization. When servers are virtualized in the cloud, providers can easily migrate the servers from one data center to another if a failureoccurs. Most on-premises systems may just have two physical servers that fail over to one another. That isn't helpful if theres a fire or a large network outage.

It takes a lot of time and money to prevent physical theft. To completely protect your on-premises servers, you need to implement heavy security, with guards, mantraps, and locked cages for the servers.

In the cloud, youreffort and expensefor all that go away. Cloud providers spend the money for round-the-clock guards and state-of-the-art physical security controls. The size and security of these data centers make targeted physical theft almost impossible.

Patching is one of the biggest security issues that companies of all sizes struggle with until they move to the cloud. In fact, some of the biggest breachesthink Equifax and the WannaCry outbreakwere a result of poor patching.

Unlike most companies, the big cloud services providers such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have the resources to hire full-time teams dedicated to patching their products. The patching process in the cloud is mostly automated, which eliminates the downtime that on-premises patching requires.

To properly watch data center security, you need to hire 24/7 staff to continuously monitor for attacks. Most organizations simply can't afford that. Cloud providers havefull-time staffing and around-the-clock security operations center (SOC)that constantly monitors their entire infrastructure.

A huge security advantage the cloud has over on-premises servers and infrastructure is segmentation from user workstations. The most common way attackers get into networks is through phishing and email-borne threats. The attacks almost always enter through user workstations. They rarely come directly through the server environment.

When you're hosted in the cloud, all of your workstations are completely segmented. In the cloud, users aren't sitting on the corporate network where the data lives.

Encryption can be difficult for companies to implement across the entire environment, but cloud providers usually offer encryption right out of the box. Encryption helps prevent data exposure, because the big cloud providers use military-grade AES 256 encryption so attackers won't be able to read any data they might steal.

There are certainly benefits that come withcloud data storage, but there are challenges to be aware of also. These include the following.

[ Get up to speed on new privacy laws with this Webcast: Californias own GDPR? Its not alone.Plus: Go deeper withTechBeacon's guide to GDPR and CCPA. ]

Although the cloud is solidly secure, companies must do their due diligence to create and maintain a secure environment for their sensitive data. Here are the best ways to proactively protect your server data in the cloud:

Enable multifactor authentication

Provide your own encryption keys

Limit access by IP address (i.e., office or VPN)

Choose a reputable, audited cloud provider

If you do all thatand remember your shared responsibility security model, your cloud vendors can help you remain vigilant.

Share your thoughts on cloud security in the comments below. What are your experiences?

[ Explore TechBeacon's guideto SecOpschallenges and opportunities. Plus: Downloadthe 2019 State of Security Operations report. ]

[ Get on top of access with TechBeacon's guide to identity governance. Plus: Learn how to secure and manage cloud-based Linux resources with Active Directory in this Webinar.]

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Why your data is safer in the cloud than on premises - TechBeacon

Global Business Cloud Storage Consumption Market Report 2019>This report offers a detailed view of market opportunity by end user segments, product segments, sales channels, key countries, and import / export dynamics. It details market size & forecast, growth drivers, emerging trends, market opportunities, and investment risks in over various segments in Business Cloud Storage Consumption industry. It provides a comprehensive understanding of Business Cloud Storage Consumption market dynamics in both value and volume terms.

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15 Appendix

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Business Cloud Storage Consumption Market Share opportunities Trends, and Forecasts to 2020-2026: Zoolz, OpenDrive, JustCloud, MozyPro, Egnyte - Daily...

How do you prepare your 10-Q when your team is working remotely?

As disruption from the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis continues, the reality of a new normal settles in. The presidents announcement yesterday that the federal social distancing guidelines are being extended through April 30 reinforces that reality. Stay-in-place/home public health directives, virtual team building and remote social interactions are likely to be mainstays in our society for an indeterminable period.

In this environment, the CFO organization faces the challenge of sustaining the continuous feed of financial information to the markets. Under the current rules of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), quarterly reports on Form 10-Q must be filed within 40 daysof fiscal quarter end for large accelerated filers and accelerated filers. All other SEC registrants have 45 days to file. For companies that have made the transition to a mostly remote and distributed workplace, what are the implications of this environment to the preparation of these reports?

Given that working remotely means the lack of person-to-person contact or in-person face-to-face interaction with co-workers, the CFOs challenge is to sustain normal ongoing filing processes as much as possible to keep everyone on the same page and on deadline. Of course, its the same closing process, same checklist of source documents and same interactions in an environment where people do not meet in person. Unfortunately, there is the daunting possibility of absenteeism and other personnel unavailability, either in the finance organization itself or in the business, that could disrupt the flow of information needed to complete required quarterly reports.

Following are some suggestions on dealing with the risks COVID-19 poses to the filing process:

The world has changed virtually overnight for CFOs as they focus on fulfilling their responsibilities while preserving the safety and health of their people. Filing a 10-Q with an empty building can work just as well as it did in normal times. With the right discipline, technology, tools and security, along with the necessary contingency plans, it will.

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Preparing A 10-Q When No Ones In The Building - Forbes

We are living through uncertain times, with many businesses enforcing work-from-home policies and moving most operations online. As a result, it has recently become more important than ever for companies and their IT departments to be absolutely certain that all of their data online is safe and secure.

This World Backup Day we spoke to six industry experts about what steps businesses and their employees should take in order to ensure their online operations are fully backed-up, particularly in times like these.

Backup and disaster recovery plans are crucial in todays data-driven society, says Dave Demlow, VP Product Management at Scale Computing. Faced with ever-increasing volumes of data, along with the growing threat of ransomware, malware, and a rapidly increasing remote workforce due to the outbreak of coronavirus, IT professionals are under tremendous pressure to protect everything while ensuring production systems arent impacted.

"World Backup Day serves as an important reminder to raise awareness on the cruciality of data protection, backup and business continuity plans. Data loss prevention can be achieved through performing frequent backups and should be considered a high priority to individuals and businesses alike.

"Due to the increase in cyberthreats and the rapidly growing remote workforce, its important to secure and protect IT infrastructure with a disaster recovery plan. Implementing a recovery plan allows users to proactively prevent or recover quickly from disasters, ensuring data is safe and mission-critical business applications are available.

"Many only emphasise the currency and frequency of the recovery points, but the time it takes to recover information is just as significant. Backup and disaster recovery plans should be regularly evaluated to protect organisations from being blindsided by an incident.

The data held by organisations in the U.K. public sector is some of the most critical and sensitive data in the country, comments Sascha Giese, Head Geek at SolarWinds. From medical records to national defence information, the public sector is responsible for keeping all its data safe and untouchable from unauthorised users. Particularly now that organisations are more likely to use a combination of on-premises and cloud, IT teams need to be confident that all the data across all storage locations is backed up if theres any unscheduled downtime.

The risks of creating a backup manually without an automated solution are too great for the public sector to consider, and therefore organisations shouldif they havent alreadylook to implement a cost-effective backup solution to not only manage all of this complex and sensitive data, but reduce time spent by IT teams keeping backups up to date. Its also worth noting a backup isnt a backup until the integration of data is verified, and the restoration process tested; neither of these can be rushed. Though adopting a backup solution means additional cost in the short-term, having this safety blanket in place will reassure millions of citizens their data is as safe as it can be.

93 per cent of companies that lost their data centre for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster, reveals Eltjo Hofstee, Managing Director at Leaseweb UK. World Backup Day is the perfect opportunity for businesses to ponder this, then ask themselves the following questions: How much time am I prepared to have mission-critical functions unavailable? How much data am I prepared to lose? How much money will it cost while these services are not available? If these questions raise concerns, it is time for a business to address its backup strategy. The most valuable assets should be prioritised and organisations need to be demanding about the quality, scalability and reliability of backup solutions.

Eltjo continues: Backing-up data is pivotal to a successful disaster recovery plan. Data has been backed up since the beginning of the computer age, but there have been many changes in the methods and storage technology used in this process. There has been an evolution in storage technology from tapes, to hard drives, to where we are now, which is cloud storage. One benefit of modern cloud backup solutions is that they are suitable for businesses of any size. A business and its employees can back up data to the cloud from any server or device, anywhere with an internet connection. Cloud backup solutions are easy to manage, and their providers offer hands-on customer support.

World Backup Day was created to remind consumers about the need to backup their most important digital files, explains Jon Lucas, Co-Director at Hyve Managed Hosting. But taking a business view on March 31st is just as imperative, and never has this been more clear than in todays uncertain and digitally-reliant workplace. Few companies would argue that backups aren't worth the effort, however, every year we see stories about lost revenue and lost reputation because a backup hasnt been there when needed.

One of the ways sufficient backup plans can drop off the IT to-do list is because businesses dont have the time, resources or experience to manage it in-house. But with the cloud computing and managed service era comes a practical and affordable way forward, and working with a partner that offers backup and disaster recovery solutions can be easily built into any IT environment. So, although awareness of its importance is for most improving, understanding its urgency and where to go for help remains a key message this World Backup Day.

"There are two major reasons why we should take backups seriously: Hardware failure and human error, says Steve Cochran, Chief Technology Officer at ConnectWise. Systems are not fool proof and every piece of hardware will fail eventually, so its not a question of if, but rather when, these failures will happen. If you havent kept up with your backups, youll get caught unprepared. Theres also a factor of human error where you might accidentally delete a file or photo. We put our entire lives on our computers and mobile devices, but we also make mistakes, and not having a backup system in place is almost silly at this point. While you need to dedicate some time to set up automatic backups, you dont have to keep up with them -- they simply run in the background.

Backing up isnt just something we should do on a personal level. Hardware failures and human errors happen on a global scale, so backups should be an important consideration for any business, large or small. When you back up your data, your business is better prepared to handle any situation, whether human error, natural disaster or global crisis. With backups in place, youre proactive, which means your data is safe and youre prepared to address problems immediately, which minimises the impact on your customers."

Back in 2011, World Backup Day was initiated in order to remind us how essential it is to have a copy of our data and information, concludes Gijsbert Janssen van Doorn, Technology Evangelist at Zerto. But, while the day has only grown in significance over the years, backup technology has barely begun to evolve. From tape, to hard drive and now cloud which is really just tape in many cases the target and management has changed, yet it is still fundamentally based on periodic snapshots of information.

But in our always-on business landscape, and especially in times of crisis like we are currently experiencing, can an organisation still be truly protected with an antiquated backup strategy?

The short answer is it cant. Data should be protected by continuous replication, which makes sure that every change, update and added piece of data is always available. This gives the reassurance that all data is protected up to a moment before anything disrupts it. If your organisation doesnt have a solid strategy and supporting tactical plan in place, now is the time to implement one.

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World Backup Day: tech to rely on in times of uncertainty - ITProPortal