You can share storage from the nuc to another device over the network, same way as if you went and bought a synology/qnap nas or other with cifs/nfs. It's a full pc, but you could just install freenas or like on it and use it as a storage array as well easy enough.
Oddly I saw that someone was selling synology clones on random chinese hardware on ebay so it *is* possible to use on NOT their hardware. I use a couple synologys and love them vs. using freenas or other storage distributions. Kind of a hackintosh for the storage world, maybe even your nuc.
-mb