Qumulo and Cisco Deliver Industry-First CloudBridge Architecture to Bypass the Hardware Crunch and 400% “Flash Tax”

Qumulo, the Accelerated Data company, announced a new joint Bridge-to-Cloud solution that enables enterprises to extend high-value file workloads from trusted on-premises infrastructure into the cloud without disruptive migration or application refactoring. By combining Cloud Native Qumulo (CNQ) Enterprise with Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) via Qumulo’s Cloud Data Fabric, organizations can immediately bypass current hardware lead times and historic prices on all-flash systems.

Also Read: AIThority Interview With Rohit Agarwal, Founder & CEO of Portkey

“CNQ Enterprise with Cisco UCS provides the bridge that enterprise infrastructure teams need to deal with the real, immediate pressure they’re feeling without asking them to rip out what’s already working.” Brandon Whitelaw, SVP of Product at Qumulo

The hyperscalers have fundamentally reshaped the memory and NVMe landscape by consuming unprecedented volumes of flash and DRAM for their massive AI training and inference clusters. This structural demand, secured through multi-year supply agreements, has led to a global NAND shortage and price surges of over 400% on high-performance storage and memory, with lead times stretching up to 26 weeks. This “flash tax” and supply chain volatility render the traditional enterprise strategy of overprovisioning with all-flash systems financially dangerous and impractical. Alternatively, customers face multi-year application migrations to cloud or extended support contracts from legacy storage vendors exceeding 150% of the initial system price for just one extra year.

The Qumulo and Cisco Bridge-to-Cloud solution directly solves this capacity and performance constraint without disrupting critical workflows. By seamlessly extending file workloads to the cloud, enterprises can immediately free up on-premises resources for high-priority applications while maintaining operational continuity, a consistent user experience, and the flexibility to transition workloads back on-premises as business needs evolve.

“CNQ Enterprise with Cisco UCS provides the bridge that enterprise infrastructure teams need to deal with the real, immediate pressure they’re feeling without asking them to rip out what’s already working,” said Brandon Whitelaw, SVP of Product at Qumulo. “Capacity extends to the cloud instantly. Users and applications never know that the systems have been extended into the cloud. Additionally, the entire dataset is fully accessible in the cloud to be used in combination with zero-copy AI pipelines into services like Microsoft AI Foundry, AWS Bedrock, or Google Vertex AI. That combination not only provides immediate relief from today’s pressure but also delivers flexibility for tomorrow’s demands.”

AI-Ready Infrastructure from On-Premises to Cloud

As enterprises accelerate AI and analytics initiatives, the ability to access and process large volumes of unstructured data across hybrid environments becomes a critical infrastructure requirement. CNQ Enterprise, which now includes unlimited Cloud Data Fabric and NeuralProtect, running on Cisco UCS on-premises and across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), provides the scalable, high-performance data foundation that AI and analytics workloads demand without requiring organizations to rebuild their infrastructure from scratch.

Cisco UCS and Qumulo together deliver a unified infrastructure backbone that supports the full spectrum of enterprise data workloads, from traditional file services to emerging AI pipelines, with operational consistency across on-premises, remote edge, and cloud environments.

Any Data. Any Location. Total Control.

The Qumulo and Cisco Bridge-to-Cloud delivers what traditional Network Attached Storage (NAS) expansion and basic cloud migration cannot:

• Hybrid cloud without disruptive migration: Extend file workloads to the cloud without application refactoring, workflow interruption, or forced timelines
• Immediate capacity relief: Move select workloads to the cloud to free on-premises infrastructure for business-critical applications
• Infrastructure flexibility: Optimize long-term on-premises footprint while maintaining seamless access across cloud and edge environments
• Unified global namespace: Qumulo’s Cloud Data Fabric eliminates storage silos and makes distributed data accessible everywhere
• Local-like performance: Qumulo’s NeuralCache and high-performance Cisco networking ensure users experience no degradation
• Elastic scale: Grow from terabytes to exabytes across clouds without fixed hardware constraints

Qumulo CNQ Enterprise is available now for deployment on Cisco UCS on-premises infrastructure and across AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI. CNQ Enterprise is available through Cisco for simplified enterprise procurement.

Also Read: ​​AI-Driven Risk Intelligence: How FIs Are Predicting Systemic Shocks

[To share your insights with us, please write to psen@itechseries.com]