The debate around making enterprise data accessible to employees on their favorite devices has been raging for months. Now, Nasuni, a pioneer of enterprise-class cloud storage, is adding support for Android and Apple mobile devices in a way that it says won’t give IT departments fits.
In short, authenticated users can access their corporate documents from smartphones as securely as they can from their desktops. The key is that IT retains control and can enable/disable these devices individually, remotely wipe them as needed.
The problem of letting users access corporate data from personal devices is the crux of the whole BYOD debate that’s roiled of late. End users want to keep using their favorite devices and tools like Dropbox, but IT chafes at the notion of company data flowing to what they see as vulnerable endpoints.
Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez
“We extend the storage infrastructure so that you can access your files now with your iPhone with the same restrictions, the same security model that applies to your desktop computer,” said Andres Rodriguez, CEO of the Natick, MA-based company.
Rivals like Dropbox or VMware’s Horizon (aka Octopus) product also integrate with Active Directory but Rodriguez says there is a meaningful difference between integrating with AD and adopting or extending AD to other devices. Those other solutions rely on the creation of an array of peer-to-peer permissions to set access while Nasuni extends existing AD permissions for the user to his or her own other device.
Rodriquez sees Box as complimentary to Nasuni: “Box is good for sharing content outside the organization with contractors, ad or PR agencies etc — people outside your Active Directory. Nasuni uses the same file server you use now — we’re not trying to have you share something outside you’re own walls but we want you to be able to access it from anywhere.”
The new mobile functionality rolls out this week. Nasuni charges customers based on amount of storage under management. Extending internal enterprise security controls to external devices will be a trend. “II’d be shocked if in the next 12 to 24 months all the storage vendors aren’t doing this,” he said.
