EDITOR ’ S QUESTION

ANDREW MARTIN , SENIOR SALES DIRECTOR

EMEA & MANAGING DIRECTOR UK AT EGNYTE

The emergence of COVID-19 at the beginning of 2020 only served to accelerate this trend , as traditional office-orientated companies scrambled to put remote working solutions in place to prevent major business disruption . In April 2020 for instance , Microsoft CEO , Satya Nadella , provided some powerful insight when he said his company had seen ‘ two years ’ worth of Digital Transformation in two months ’.

For some organisations , this has brought their entire on-premises IT strategy into question and the option of going ‘ all in ’ with an approach based fully around the cloud is an increasingly attractive alternative .

As the service provider market has matured and become more competitive , barriers to adoption have gradually disappeared and many tech teams are building increasingly sophisticated strategies .

However , pure cloud solutions aren ’ t a silver bullet for everyone , and modern hybrid solutions can help strike a perfect balance between the flexibility of cloud and the speed and reliability of on-premises . In these cases , organisations must still deliver effective services that meet the needs of users and customers alike .

Taking the hybrid cloud concept a stage further , smart caching is an approach that optimises on-premises storage by automatically identifying files to cache based on business-driven policies . The process also removes files that are no longer relevant for users based on changing priorities and needs , and this cleanses files that are no longer needed or seldom accessed to make space for new ones .

This not only reduces the number of times files need to be retrieved from the cloud , while the use of advanced data caching algorithms helps maximise the speed and efficiency of content delivery , while also improving the user experience .

In many current situations , these file requests are supported on public clouds , and a hybrid solution deployed within a public cloud would provide the SMB protocol needed for these specialised applications . But by using a smart cache , the cloud is brought closer to the user with the result that their key applications , files , data and permissions are more readily accessible .

Another benefit of this approach is that it can also help organisations significantly reduce network traffic by cutting hit rates for cached files and keeping local storage to a minimum . In addition , it takes the guesswork out of local caching and by reducing administrative overheads it helps admins focus on more strategic activities .

As businesses everywhere refine their long-term remote and hybrid working policies , it becomes more important than ever that they develop their technology infrastructure to support the efficiency and productivity of workers wherever they are based .

For some , an ‘ all-in ’ cloud platform offers the ideal solution , while for others , a hybrid solution using smart caching is a more effective route for delivering the performance and flexibility needed in today ’ s demanding work environments .

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