Infrastructure Meets Edge Content Intelligence with Smart Cache

Businesses have long relied on Egnyte’s hybrid technology for low-latency access to large files in bandwidth-constrained environments, and to ensure business continuity during internet outages. By syncing cloud content to a local storage device, hybrid architecture enables caching close to the user, which offers major benefits for customers who need cloud-scale connectivity with on-prem performance.

The broader trend toward “edge” is about bringing storage and computing capabilities closer to users to reduce latencies and core-infrastructure dependencies. And while features like delta-sync, global file locking, and location awareness have made hybrid more efficient and usable than ever, some challenges have persisted. Traditionally, syncing requires manual configuration of the local appliance to determine which content to sync. This is typically done through subjective analysis of which files, folders, and user groups most heavily access which content, and then designating a hybrid device that the self-selected items should sync to.

“As a systems administrator, I face a challenge in identifying what files need to be synchronized across different office locations,” says Dylan Brown, Systems Engineer, Brasfield & Gorrie. “To be on the conservative side, I end up synchronizing more folders than the users possibly access across these offices. This directly impacts the disk storage allocated on-premises since remote offices necessarily do not have large on-premises storage infrastructure.”

‍What’s New? Smart Cache
‍Egnyte has long led the way in edge caching technology through its unique approach to hybrid-cloud content architecture. Smart Cache takes it one step further by applying advanced data caching algorithms to boost efficiency, speed, and user experience to optimize content delivery at any location.

Egnyte’s Smart Cache uses machine learning to help alleviate the challenges of traditional hybrid deployments by learning which files are accessed most often, and storing them at-the-ready. Over time, it cleanses the cache of data that is less likely to be used, freeing up storage space and reducing the number of calls to the cloud. Smart Cache provides the speed and efficiency benefits of Egnyte’s industry-leading hybrid technology, with a very low administrative lift.

• Reduce network traffic. Businesses using Smart Cache saw a 40 percent jump in the hit rate for cached files: a 3X improvement in accuracy over traditional hybrid delivering a drastic reduction in network traffic.
• Reduce local data storage. Customers with Smart Cache reversed the trend of data growth, ultimately reducing peak cache storage by 10 percent.
• Reduce administrative overhead. Smart Cache lets administrators get back to their day jobs and takes the guesswork out of local caching.

Smart Cache is a member of the Egnyte family of hybrid capabilities and is now available as part of the Egnyte platform. To learn more, visit egnyte.com/platform.

‍Photo by Anna Gru on Unsplash