Backup is a Feature, not a Solution!

Mike Nikzad, COO, Syncplicity

Mike Nikzad, COO, Syncplicity

Significant Business Impact of Lost Documents

In a fast-paced business environment, losing documents that knowledge workers invested time and energy into has a significant impact on your business—missed internal and external deadlines, lost sales analysis numbers, customer meetings without the latest presentation, etc.

"Real-time document backup and anytime, anywhere access that end-users demand, without compromising on security, control, or choice of file-storage location"

When a laptop crashes or is stolen, the resulting productivity loss can turn into days of downtime unless you have a robust real-time document backup and continuous availability solution in place—one that provides instant access to documents from anywhere, on any device.

Backup is a Feature not a Solution

Workers today expect that all their work files are available everywhere and anytime thanks to how they deal with their personal files outside of work. The difference at work is the complexity of the work environment combined with the sensitivity of work information that requires an enterprise rather than consumer-grade solution to anywhere, anytime file access and sharing. Syncplicity Enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) is the answer to their demands by giving them the functionality they are used to and the security that the company requires.

Real-time Document Backup and Continuous Availability

EFSS solutions enable secure backup of desktop files and folders, while providing many complimentary benefits. They allow users to access, view, and edit content from any device, whether they are in the office or on the road. Knowledge workers continue to work as normal, but with the peace of mind that their documents are automatically backed up in real-time whenever they click “Save.” Users can also easily share folders and files with internal and external collaborators. Powerful enterprise-grade administration capabilities that enable IT to implement group-based policies can be used to restrict individuals from sharing designated content outside the company.

To ensure widespread user adoption, your IT team can silently push and install sync clients onto PCs and mobile devices using standard software distribution tools. You can designate specific folders to automatically sync, such as My Documents, Desktop, and as many custom folder paths as required. Users don’t have to remember to copy files to a “magic folder.” Instead, IT ensures that content is reliably managed, simply by selecting folders to auto-sync on user’s computers.

Continuous Access to Files from Anywhere on Any Device

With the evolution of the mobile workforce, your users often have several devices that they use interchangeably while in the office, traveling, meeting on-site with customers, or working at home. Their expectation is that if one device is not available, they can continue to access all of their files from another computer or device and keep working without missing a beat.

Secure, ubiquitous access to backed-up documents through mobile, desktop, and web apps is important to ensure users don’t experience any document access downtime. VPN is not required to access files, so users are free to work from wherever they are, using whatever device is in their hands.

Prevention of Sensitive Data Leakage

The risk associated with data leakage from lost or stolen devices is mitigated by the ability of IT administrators to remote-wipe a device as soon as it is reported missing. Even if an individual outside the company gains access to a device, group-based policies are essential to allow administrators to require app-level passcode entry, preventing malicious access to files.

Group-based policies can also be leveraged to lock down mobile device open-in capabilities to prevent document leakage on unmanaged devices. Integrations with leading mobile device management (MDM) solutions allow IT to configure fine-grained security policies, including white listing trusted apps so data leakage prevention controls do not get in the way of productivity.

Auto-versioning of Backed-up Files with Self-service Version Restore

Real-time document backup is a great way to ensure that valuable time and effort in document authoring is never lost. Network backup solutions often require a user to file an IT helpdesk ticket in order to have a particular version of a file restored, which delays productivity and adds to IT overhead. End-users must be able to directly restore previous file versions on-demand. Of course, rich global-and folder-level retention settings ensure that old versions are not kept forever.

The Importance of Storage Location Choice for Backing Up Files

Not all files are created equal. External marketing collateral is not the same as board meeting minutes, sales projections, or pending M&A due diligence evaluations. Data sovereignty, corporate compliance, and company intellectual property requirements place a heavy burden on IT to ensure files are stored in a secure location that meets strict regulations—secure enough to ensure your CIO can sleep at night. It is important that IT can choose where backed-up files reside—public cloud storage, private cloud storage, private on-premises storage in your own datacenter, or a hybrid combination. StorageVaults provide unparalleled control and flexibility by enabling IT to assign different groups of users (or folders) to regional or country-based on-premises locations, or to cloud storage.

A Solution to the Shadow IT “Dropbox Problem”

When IT does not provide a backup solution that allows easy access to documents from any device, anywhere, anytime, users quickly find ways to share files with the same consumer systems they use in their personal lives. This introduces many risks associated with data privacy and protection, corporate compliance, and leakage of sensitive company intellectual property. Most CIO’s aren’t aware of how extensive the problem is, and they are often surprised when their team performs a network traffic analysis that reveals how prevalent the “Dropbox problem” has become.

It is crucial that you deploy a secure real-time backup and EFSS solution that IT trusts. Equally important, though, is that users love its exciting user interface, which they easily adopt across all of their connected tablets, smartphones, and computers.

IT Cost Take Out

Deploying a single solution for backup and EFSS reduces the number of vendor solutions you have to manage and provides cost savings for already tight IT budgets. EFSS can also replace antiquated and expensive file share and home directory infrastructures in an extremely cost-effective way. For some organizations, cost savings are in millions of dollars.

A Worthy Digital Transformation Initiative for Any Business

As an IT organization, replacing your existing single-purpose desktop backup software with a feature rich hybrid EFSS solution saves money and helps you avoid costly downtime associated with loss of access to critical business documents. Before renewing your costly back-up application maintenance contract or adding more and more expensive hardware to store back-up files or email attachments, choose a digital transformation for your organization by deploying an EFSS solution.

IT organizations in large, security-conscious, multi-national enterprises across all industries trust Syncplicity to provide real-time document backup and anytime, anywhere access that end-users demand, without compromising on security, control, or choice of file-storage location.