Microsoft and Avere Systems, a hybrid cloud storage startup, have struck a strategic relationship to use Avere’s Virtual FXT Edge filers in the Azure cloud.
Avere’s virtualized network-attached storage (NAS) package gives companies the ability to store files anywhere in the cloud or on premises without sacrificing the performance, availability or security of their data.
As a result of last week’s deal, Azure customers can now deploy thousands of Azure HPC instances on demand to crunch their on-premises data with near zero-latency and no data migration. Businesses can now tap into Azure’s infrastructure in only a few minutes.
Avere claims its virtual NAS solution is easy to install and manage, provides multi-protocol file access (including NFS and SMB), and clusters to deliver high availability, scalable performance and capacity.
Avere said that the partnership is in response to Azure customer demand. The company is aiming its products and services at companies that require compute-intensive/mission critical applications. These organizations needed a way to flexibly compute on-demand for burst use cases and sustained use.
Avere’s cloud-bursting technology lowers costs, boosts ROI and levels the playing field for smaller organizations. Being able to tap into Azure’s infrastructure on-demand allows even small companies to leverage competitive advantages that were once only available to large corporations, Avere said.
Avere’s technology is being used in many industries, including media and entertainment (Avere was used by most of the top Hollywood studios in 2013, 2014 and 2015), oil and gas (three of the world’s major oil producers use Avere) and life sciences (Inova uses it to help with the world’s largest database of genomic sequences). Avere is already being used by Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform customers.
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