Oct 14, 2009

NAS with E = NASE

What is NASE?
It's a storage system for Smart Grid- "Network Attached Storage for Energy"

Note:I confess that I didn't invent this acronym. I read some where in the web and got interested.

I am working in the cloud storage for last 3 years and understood the market potential of mapping web layer on top of storage. The cloud storage enables the cut-through communication for any web tiers, all the way from browsers to talk to storage systems.

Similarly, NASE may do the same for Smart Grid. Why do I think so? If you look at the diagram below(click on it to see it clearly) illustrating the information sharing across various players & components, you will see the complexity of the Smart Grid and the need for a new storage system.

What is the information sharing challenge in Smart Grid?
The current electricity is one-way communication. The very basic of Smart Grid is to enable 2-way communication. So we can't simply map this Smart Grid information sharing on top of the current producer-consumer storage systems because the current storage is designed for 1-way communication. Simply, Smart Grid will demand producer/consumer - consumer/producer storage systems.

So, What is NASE?
All I can say now is that it's no longer about simply moving the bits in one direction but in 2 directions with "intelligence" embedded in it.