The new evolution of Command Suite into Hitachi Vantara Ops Center has greatly simplified working with the Hitachi Vantara Storage systems compared to previous management tooling. Use of the whole suite including Performance Analyzer makes managing the entire Hitachi storage ecosystem a full featured and more approachable task. I enjoy the completeness of the solution as well as the integration that they have begun to employ.
Panzura works well for companies that have a high amount of data with cross site collaboration being done. The caching ensures you don't need huge investments of storage at each site and the cloud storage ensures high availability over what can be done locally. Also helps eliminate duplicate data across sites and/or small variations in the same data.
I would like to see more connectors. Tie in to traditional block storage or NAS. Additional cloud connectors to products like Hitachi Content Platform.
I would like to see a collaborative product created between Panzura and Riverbed. I envision an almost perfect small footprint ROBO solution where Riverbed provides the compute+WAN optimization and Panzura provides the storage/risiliancy components. Combine the boxes into a single 4U solution and you have a near perfect product for remote offices.
The interfaces are well designed and not overly populated with extraneous detail. Disparate but related feature sets are supported via separate interfaces that share a UX look and feel so that it doesn't feel like completely different panes of glass. Copy data management activity is still a bit clunky as it is accomplished via a re-purposed backup tool that was written to handle replicas, images and snapshots) but over all it is useable and has an interesting interface where elements are dragged onto the workflows.
Hands down support is the best part of Panzura. Their techs are always helpful, always knowledgeable, and consistently solve complex problems quickly. You can definitely tell they hire their support folks from the top tier of other companies and they go above and beyond what I have come to expect in terms of support compared to other companies.
Better reputation to start with, Hitachi appears to have (and thus hopefully will continue to have) great customer service for its products. Moreover, Hitachi Command Suite offered the most comprehensive, in terms of variables and aspects measured, functioning compared to its peers. Other software services were just as clunky, without the extra features, and without the customer service reputation, Hitachi has. So far I/we have been pleased with this selection.
