Panzura Symphony, an unstructured data management platform, was launched this week by Panzura. The solution aligns complex and growing data estates with business outcomes. It offers a comprehensive suite of vendor-certified data operations within a single, unified interface.
Panzura acquired Moonwalk Universal earlier this year. The new platform evolves the former Moonwalk solution with a new and expanding toolset for enterprise customers. Panzura says Symphony complements the functionality of PanzuraCloudFS which has been the company’s flagship solution to date. PanzuraCloudFS is a hybrid cloud file services platform that supports large-scale multi-site workflows for the most active data.
According to CEO Dan Waldschmidt, “Panzura Symphony brings together proven technology and Panzura’s future vision where data management meets strategy for business success.”
The extension of the company’s portfolio addresses the data that is not covered by CloudFS, which is about 90% of the data in modern enterprises according to Panzura. The company says its customers need synchronous visibility and control over this data to fully leverage digital transformation.
Panzura Symphony supports a wide range of file system deployments and protocols, as well as cloud object storage including major providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage.
Panzura says the platform conducts comprehensive data discovery and assessments that help businesses to get visibility and insights into their data. It identifies cost optimization opportunities based on data attributes like volatility, temperature, file type, file size, ownership, and metadata tags.
A detailed overview of data, including its structure, content, and relationships allows users of the platform to connect their data to business needs and requirements.
Symphony also supports AI workflows by streamlining data placement, transformation, and restructuring. Panzura says this capability is essential for AI pipelines.
The data services platform also offers granular control over unstructured data at the folder, share, entire file system, or bucket level. According to Panzura, this “ensures that actions are precise and tailored to the specific needs of an organization.”
From a risk and compliance perspective, the platform provides line-of-business leaders such as Data Governance Officers, Risk and Compliance Managers, Business Analysts, and Security Specialists with the ability to meet data handling, privacy, and chain of custody regulations.
It has the ability to conduct data analysis and apply policies to data, as well as move data and deliver detailed, sharable, and exportable reports on the status of data as it relates to compliance and risk.
Overall, the platform helps organizations see and aggregate their unstructured data. Sundar Kanthadai is the chief technology officer of Panzura. He said, “Panzura Symphony helps organizations navigate blind spots within expanding data estates. They can get compliant, stay compliant, and scale into every corner of their unstructured footprint.”
Symphony’s dynamic data movement orchestration capabilities, according to the company, allow ITOps and storage teams to precisely manage data placement, archive, and migration. This transforms the data framework of customers, says Panzura.
It also helps efficiently process data through AI pipelines. The platform leverages various triggers and transformation functions to handle different data workloads and ecosystems. By optimizing file and object workflows, Symphony contributes cost savings, reduces the overall storage footprint, and helps lower the total cost of storage. It also helps organizations avoid vendor lock with cloud providers.
Panzura says much of this is accomplished through key capabilities of the platform. Panzura Symphony applies governance and management policies in seconds for file and object data inspection to allow for insights and reporting, data mobilization and archive, and workflow and AI pipeline automation integration for DevOps support.
Transparent to users and applications, original namespace, security, and file metadata is preserved, providing autonomous streaming of content on demand. Panzura says the result is “dramatically reduced storage costs, efficient workflows, and more proactive and compliant data posture.”
Symphony supports DevOps teams through webhooks, APIs, post-run actions, and relational database integration. These features allow DevOps teams to handle large volumes of unstructured data.
Additional new capabilities in Panzura Symphony allow teams to aggregate storage consumption for chargebacks within their organization to ensure proper cost control by the department. Panzura says it also provides a RESTful API for integration with existing control, workflow, automation, and billing systems, enabling teams to streamline operations and productivity.
