CTERA announced version 7.5 of the CTERA Enterprise File Services Platform which has a number of new features, including CTERA’s patented Cloud Storage Routing technology and numerous enhancements in data management, deduplication, and security. To learn more, VMblog reached out to their Chief Strategy Officer, Oded Nagel.
VMblog: CTERA has revealed 7.5, the newest version of its Enterprise File Services Platform. Tell us about it.
Oded Nagel: I’m going to begin talking about CTERA 7.5 by first pointing to its predecessor. Our Enterprise File Services Platform 7.0 version was introduced in October 2020, and its relevance and value has remained high, through its introduction, through the pandemic, and it has continued to win awards such as the highest leader position in GigaOm’s latest Radar for Distributed Cloud File Storage. Our cloud-based file storage and sharing software provides fast and secure access to files in the public cloud. And so, we’re quite proud to bring 7.5 to market. The innovations offered in 7.5 include the introduction of CTERA’s patented Cloud Storage Routing technology as well as numerous enhancements in data management, deduplication, and security. This release further expands our mission to bring the most robust enterprise file services and storage to the new world of multi-cloud.
VMblog: It seems like the big story here for 7.5 is the Cloud Storage Routing?
Nagel: 7.5 in its entirety offers several enhancements, but our Cloud Storage Routing does take into consideration the technology acquisition strategies of most enterprises today. There is the reality that most data environments are comprised of solutions from several vendors. CTERA Cloud Storage Routing allows organizations to efficiently utilize multiple cloud storage providers and on-premises object storage systems while providing policy-based control over data placement. Organizations can route data to be stored wherever they wish with a fine granularity based on tenant, user, or individual directory. CTERA Cloud Storage Routing supports organizations’ data sovereignty and GDPR compliance initiatives, while providing low-latency access to data and minimizing those ever-increasing cloud egress fees.
Cloud Routing is built on the foundation of CTERA Direct, our high-performance, low-latency, direct-to-cloud data transport protocol that was designed to overcome data transfer challenges across different cloud environments and high-latency links, while adhering to a zero-trust philosophy.
VMblog: You mentioned that there are other significant enhancements in 7.5. What are they?
Nagel: Additional features include Cache Deduplication which offers edge filer-level deduplication of cached data, which increase storage efficiency by up to 80%, while reducing costs as well as the hardware footprint at the edge. Another feature, Enterprise Key Management, delegates the storage of cryptographic keys using the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP), including certified support for Thales CipherTrust. Permanent Delete offers an unrecoverable file erasure option, supporting GDPR’s “right to be forgotten.” Support was also added for Cohesity SmartFiles, Quantum ActiveScale, and Hitachi Content Platform version 9.4. We are also introducing a new user interface for our Edge Filers and an enhanced Mac OS experience that includes a zero-touch deployment option supporting the JAMF platform.
VMblog: What about the security aspects of 7.5?
Nagel: Cybersecurity is of paramount importance to our clients and to CTERA’s developers and leadership. Offering the most secure offering is a massive differentiator in the marketplace, and CTERA continues to offer the most modern feature set with data security top of mind. CTERA brought to market the first global file system to offer virus protection at the edge and in the cloud. CTERA provides multi-layer virus scanning delivering full threat protection at all entry points to the global file system as well as continuous scanning for newly discovered virus definitions, providing the industry’s most robust ransomware remediation solution.
VMblog: Is 7.5 generally available?
Nagel: The product is in early availability now and will be generally available in January.
VMblog: What’s in store for the new year at CTERA?
Nagel: Staying in the lead and offering our customers the best of the best in global file services will remain our top priority in 2023. Two areas of focus will be continued enhancements to our ransomware detection engine and releasing more data service connectors for cloud analytics.
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