Nov 17, 2014 -- TBG Partners, the largest landscape architecture firm in the Southwest United States, is using the Nasuni Service to give all of its office locations fast access to a 20 TB storage volume, much of which consists of AutoCAD, SketchUp and 3D Studio Max files that are several gigabytes in size. Nasuni also automatically protects the entire storage infrastructure with instant recovery of files no matter how large.

Over the past few years, TBG Partners has grown rapidly: the firm has expanded into new offices, undertaken projects in new markets throughout the United States and internationally, and exponentially increased the amount of data it stores. The firm currently has 20 TB of data, but CTO Greg Nichols expects that figure to more than double over the next two years. 

To watch a video interview with TBG's Greg Nichols, click here:  http://vimeo.com/105046383

Prior to deploying the Nasuni Service, each TBG Partners office had its own unique storage infrastructure, with an Internet-based VPN connecting one branch to the next. The traffic between offices was slow, and collaboration was excruciatingly inefficient, especially when design team members were working with large, multi-megabyte files. Backup and recovery was another serious pain point. Whenever files were mistakenly deleted or overwritten, IT typically had to go to tapes to recover this lost data, and the tapes were often stored off-site. As a result, the restoration process could take days.

TBG Partners turned to the Nasuni Service to solve its storage and data access challenges, but also to fully automate backup and provide instant recovery. After consulting with Nasuni’s engineers, TBG Partners designated five of its offices for Nasuni’s high-performance SSD Filers, which are designed specifically for the heavy workloads common to design-intensive firms. Smaller offices with less intense performance demands received virtual servers installed on local hardware. After IT migrated the data to the Nasuni Service, Nichols was happily surprised by how quickly and easily the solution went online and how well it performs.

“It’s remarkable. The only comments I’ve had from employees since we switched to Nasuni is that the network seems a lot faster and that they appreciate my ability to recover a file in minutes instead of days,” Nichols said. “Otherwise, I don’t think anyone noticed any change at all, which, frankly, is exactly what I like to see. And for my part, not having to worry at all about backup lets me focus on other strategic IT projects that can help move the business forward.”

“TBG Partners faces the same storage challenges that many architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms are facing,” said Andres Rodriguez, CEO of Nasuni. “Traditional storage technologies cannot meet the needs of modern organizations: data is growing too fast, across too many locations that are spread too far apart, and data protection is far too cumbersome to manage. At Nasuni, we believe global organizations need modern storage solutions. With the Nasuni Service, modern enterprises can have global access to an infinitely large file share, automatic data protection and centralized management for less money than they currently pay for backup alone, with a service-based pricing model that reflects current realities, not an artificial three-year hardware refresh cycle. The future of storage is here, and Nasuni is leading the way.”