Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) launched a new cloud solutions slate aimed at helping businesses cope with the secure file access challenges posed by the increased popularity of bring your own device (BYOD) programs among enterprises.
HDS today unveiled Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) Anywhere, which the company claims, is the “industry’s first integrated file sync and share solution that is built, sold and supported for the enterprise entirely by a single vendor.” The company argues that this approach not only consolidates management, but that it sidesteps the security and compliance concerns that hover over consumer-grade implementations.
HCP Anywhere provides automatic and secure file sync services along with Web browser support to view and manage files. Users can also “safely share files with access-controlled, time-sensitive links,” informed the company. The software integrates with Active Directory for user management and offers built-in mobile device management capabilities. The HCP Anywhere mobile app is available on the iTunes app store.
Also new is an updated version of Hitachi Content Platform (HCP). The product now supports cloud Amazon S3 applications, enabling businesses to tap the power of Amazon’s cloud while storing their data securely in-house. It also features VMware support, tiering to external storage and new metadata intelligence functionality that boosts management, search and analytics tasks.
Finally, the company launched its own hosted cloud storage offering called Hitachi Cloud Services. Envisioned as a offsite, “enterprise-to-cloud management offering” that organization can use to park their unstructured data, the Hitachi Cloud Services helps connect business applications to the cloud with a suite of cloud storage services and REST API support.
Taken altogether, the new cloud storage solutions slate can have a big impact on IT budgets.
HDS claims that by leveraging its HCP-based products, businesses can reduce total cost of ownership by 60 percent and slash backup data capacity requirements by 30 percent. Furthermore, IT departments can defer storage purchase by two years.
In a blog post, HDS product marketing manager Jeff Lundberg wrote that the new HDS cloud products allows organizations to exert complete control over the cloud strategies.
“This approach allows our customers to continue to take advantage of their existing infrastructure, consolidating and virtualizing it if need be, and then leverage one or more cloud-based approaches to extend their IT beyond the walls of their enterprise. In this way, they can deliver the services and information mobility their stakeholders need, from their own cloud, in their own way,” wrote Lundberg.
According to ESG senior analyst Terri McClure, HDS has bridged the gap between BYOD and secure enterprise file management.
“With this new cloud package, HDS is leveraging its enterprise solution provider strengths at the core and has done a nice job providing a consumer-like experience at the edge. Its new HCP Anywhere application and platform should be particularly appealing to security-conscious end users who need to lock down access to business data and leverage additional cloud capabilities and support to satisfy end user requirements for data access across multiple devices,” said McClure in press remarks.