Vivekanand Venugopal, vice president and general manager, India, Hitachi Data Systems
The accelerated growth of data and content, most of it unstructured, has become a major business driver for the adoption of cloud infrastructure. Once analyzed, these assets derive value and can reveal intelligence that, when applied to business decisions, can make a significant difference in your bottom line. However, with this growth comes an immense amount of data volume and variety that can go beyond the capacity of existing infrastructures, causing headaches for IT managers and their budgets.
Many organizations have adopted cloud infrastructure as a way to mitigate the capacity and cost issues associated with the growth of unstructured data and content. Regardless of the cloud delivery model chosen or mix of models, if you eventually end up with both private and public clouds, it is critical that companies give high priority to choosing a cloud service provider that builds its infrastructure and services on platforms that can deliver on required service levels, and on technologies that can provide quick, dependable access to all data when and where it is needed is critical.
Yet, this need for secure and dependable access becomes even more critical when factoring in the needs of today's 'consumerized' workforce with the security and compliance demands of corporate IT. As the speed of doing business continues to accelerate, users are increasingly taking matters into their own hands by using their own devices and employing consumer file sharing applications without waiting on the permission of IT. To workers, the ability to access the information they need, in the format they need, when and where they need it - whether its housed internally or externally - can be the difference between success and failure.
The threat of these services being brought into the corporate environment is clear: data leakage and the loss of intellectual property, violation of regulatory compliance for confidentiality and retention, and exposure of corporate networks to external threats. Furthermore, these services leave no room for control or visibility into the sharing environment, causing significant challenges for IT departments who are tasked with auditing the content flowing in and out of their corporate networks.
In response to all of this, IT pros are being tasked with doing the seemingly impossible - helping workers access the files they need to do their jobs, from any device at any time, but doing so in a way that delivers the security, visibility, and control that corporate IT demands and information standards require.
Giving Control Back to IT: Considerations When Shopping for Enterprise Sync and Share
The answer to this problem is not the ruthless enforcement of strict policies, as users will just find another workaround to get the data they need in order to meet productivity. IT departments need to provide solutions that employees can leverage to receive access to data when they need in a simple, efficient manner, while also adhering to strict IT guidelines and policies.
This shift brought on by BYOD and the consumerized workforce has led to the popularity of consumer cloud-based file sync and share tools like DropBox and Box. And new companies with backgrounds in everything from cloud and virtualization to sync and share are entering the market every day. In fact, a recent report from IDC estimates the market to hit $20 billion by 2015.
With all of the choices available today, how does an organization know what is right for both its business and employees? Here are some important considerations to keep in mind when shopping for enterprise sync and share solutions:
Security and Risk Management: Employees take on big risks when they hand data over to consumer cloud solutions, which do not deliver on the security and data protection requirements typically promised. When researching solutions for enterprise environments, place security as a top priority and deploy only those that offer enterprise level encryption. By doing this, IT can ensure they are addressing corporate data security and governance issues head on - eliminating the risk of exposing intellectual property and adhering to regulatory compliance standards.
Storage and Network Utilization: Relying on email attachments, content management systems, copies on user devices, in backups, and on file servers all lead to inefficient storage and network utilization owing to massive content duplication and high cost for data management. With users generating and sharing more and more copies of data, storage and network inefficiencies are being exacerbated and data is being stored unsanctioned devices, applications and clouds, putting the data outside the control and governance of corporate IT. By deploying an on-premise file sync & share solution, you can reduce the operational costs associated with data management and simplify your infrastructure - allowing you to match the costs and capabilities of out-sourced solutions with superior controls and security.
Enterprise DNA: When evaluating solutions to solve your sync and share dilemmas, look for those that are build from the ground up for the enterprise - not those that rely on public or consumer clouds for their storage environments. The best approach is to enable file synchronization and sharing from within IT, which allows users to access data and collaborate on any device, from any location at any time. The puts the power back in the hands of the business, and ensures that end-to-end file sharing solutions are deployed safely, securely, and with corporate oversight.
The bottom line? Consumer devices and technologies are here to stay. It's critical that businesses look for file synchronization and sharing solutions that are designed end-to-end for the enterprise, as these solutions encourage creative and ongoing collaboration through secure access to content that is truly fluid.
By keeping these key elements in mind and understanding the needs of both the business and its employees upfront, IT can choose the right file sync and share solution that delivers best of both worlds functionality and ensures consumer demands for mobile services are met with enterprise-class reliability.