Data Management Glossary
NAS Cost Savings
What is NAS (Network Attached Storage)?
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a file-based storage system that provides shared access to data over a network. It is widely used by enterprises to store and manage unstructured data such as documents, images, videos, research data, and application files.
NAS systems are designed for:
- Centralized file storage
- High-performance access for users and applications
- Scalability across departments and workloads
Because of its flexibility and ease of use, NAS has become the primary platform for unstructured data in most organizations.
Why NAS Sprawls Across the Enterprise
Over time, NAS environments tend to expand rapidly across organizations due to:
- Departmental growth: Teams deploy their own storage for specific workloads
- Application silos: Different applications require dedicated file storage
- Mergers and acquisitions: New environments are added without consolidation
- Performance demands: High-performance workloads drive additional NAS purchases
- Lack of visibility: IT often lacks a global view of data usage across systems
The result for many enterprise IT organizations is a fragmented, multi-vendor NAS environment with data distributed across on-premises systems, edge locations, and cloud file storage.
Who are the Leading NAS Vendors by Category?
Enterprise NAS environments typically include a mix of vendors and architectures:
Traditional Enterprise NAS
- NetApp
- Dell Technologies
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Scale-Out and High-Performance NAS:
- IBM
- Qumulo
Modern All-Flash and Data Platform Vendors:
- Everpure (formerly Pure Storage)*
- VAST Data
Cloud File Storage
- Amazon Web Services (Amazon FSx)
- Microsoft Azure
- Google Cloud
Most enterprises operate multiple NAS platforms simultaneously, contributing to complexity and cost.
*Note that Everpure is a modern all-flash storage platform provider, not a traditional NAS vendor. It delivers high-performance file and object storage (e.g., FlashBlade) often used for:
- AI and analytics workloads
- High-performance computing (HPC)
- Large-scale unstructured data environments
Modern platforms such as Everpure (formerly Pure Storage) and VAST Data deliver high-performance, all-flash architectures designed for AI and large-scale unstructured data. While these platforms improve performance and efficiency within their environments, they do not address the broader challenge of managing and optimizing unstructured data across multi-vendor NAS, object, and cloud storage, where most enterprises operate today.
Why NAS Is So Expensive
NAS costs continue to rise due to a combination of factors:
- Premium Storage for All Data: A large portion of NAS data, often 60–80%, is inactive, yet still resides on high-performance, high-cost storage.
- Rising Flash and Memory Prices: Increases in DRAM, NAND flash, and SSD costs directly impact NAS pricing, making expansions and refreshes more expensive.
- Backup and Disaster Recovery Costs: All data stored on NAS is typically: Backed up, Replicated, Protected for compliance. This multiplies the cost of storing inactive data.
- Data Growth: Unstructured data is growing rapidly due to: AI and analytics, Digital transformation, Rich media and research data
- Vendor Lock-In and Inefficiencies: Traditional NAS environments often rely on vendor-specific tools that:
- Limit flexibility
- Increase long-term costs
- Introduce rehydration penalties when moving data
The Need for Analytics-Driven Unstructured Data Management
To achieve meaningful NAS cost savings, organizations need more than storage features. They need data intelligence.
Analytics-driven unstructured data management provides:
- Global visibility across all NAS and file storage
- Insight into data usage, age, and value
- Identification of cold or inactive data
- Policy-driven automation for data movement
This approach enables organizations to:
- Reduce reliance on expensive primary storage
- Lower backup and infrastructure costs
- Optimize storage across hybrid environments
Komprise Intelligent Data Management for NAS Cost Savings
Komprise Intelligent Data Management delivers analytics-driven unstructured data management purpose-built for enterprise NAS environments.
Key Komprise Capabilities Include:
- Global data visibility: Analyze data across multi-vendor NAS, object storage, and cloud to understand usage and growth.
- Transparent file tiering: Move inactive data to lower-cost storage while maintaining seamless access for users and applications.
- No rehydration penalty: Access or migrate data without recalling it to primary storage, avoiding hidden costs and delays.
- Storage-agnostic optimization: Work across all storage vendors to eliminate silos and reduce lock-in.
- Backup cost reduction: Shrink the primary data footprint, reducing backup, replication, and DR costs.
- Reduced ransomware data protection costs: Shrink the attack surface by minimizing exposure by removing cold data from active storage and backup footprints, reducing the volume ransomware attackers can encrypt.
- AI-ready data foundation: Organize and enrich unstructured data so it can be leveraged for AI, analytics, and automation.
How Komprise Maximizes NAS Cost Savings
With the right approach, organizations can:
- Reclaim significant primary NAS capacity
- Extend the life of existing storage infrastructure
- Avoid or delay costly storage refresh cycles
- Reduce backup and disaster recovery costs
- Optimize data placement across hybrid environments
Instead of continuously buying more NAS capacity, organizations can get more value from their existing investment.
Why NAS Cost Savings Matter in Hybrid IT
As enterprises adopt hybrid and multi-cloud architectures, NAS environments become more complex and costly.
Without intelligent data management:
- Costs scale with data growth
- Data remains siloed and underutilized
- AI initiatives are limited by poor data access
With Komprise, organizations can:
- Right-place data across on-prem and cloud storage
- Control costs while maintaining performance
- Enable secure, governed access to data for AI
What is the fastest way to reduce NAS storage costs?
The fastest way is to identify and tier inactive data off expensive primary NAS systems to lower-cost storage, reducing both storage and backup costs.
Inactive data consumes expensive storage capacity and is still backed up and replicated, multiplying its cost across storage and data protection systems.
NAS is essential for unstructured data, but without the right strategy, it becomes a major cost burden.
By moving inactive data off primary NAS, Komprise reduces the total data footprint that needs to be backed up and replicated, lowering overall data protection costs.
How does NAS cost optimization support AI initiatives?
Optimizing NAS reduces costs while making unstructured data more visible and accessible, enabling organizations to prepare and use data for AI and analytics at scale.Analytics-driven unstructured data management with Komprise enables organizations to reduce NAS costs, extend infrastructure life, and unlock the full value of their data in a hybrid, AI-driven world.