Hitachi Data Systems continues to expand the functionality of its platform introduced in 2013 as a sync ‘n’ share variant of its Hitachi Content Platform with new and enhanced features.
Jeff Lundberg, Senior Product Marketing Manager at HDS
Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has announced version 2.1 of its Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) Anywhere offering, with some significant enhancements, including the upgrading of its data protection and security capabilities sufficient to allow HDS to tout it as the most secure such solution on the market.
HCP Anywhere was originally released in 2013 as a pure sync ‘n’ share variant of its HCP platform directed particularly at BYOD users. While the product had some success out of the gate, HDS quickly expanded its functionality.
“HCP Anywhere has evolved since it was introduced,” said Jeff Lundberg, Senior Product Marketing Manager at HDS. “It’s not just our file sync product; it’s also our data mobility product. We don’t see just sync ‘n’ share by itself as a standalone offering. It’s part of a larger set of solutions about managing and properly governing data that comes out of unstructured data applications, and enables us to make a much broader play in the market.”
“One of our differentiators has always been our integrated portfolio, and the degree to which it is fully integrated compared to competitor products.” said Tanya Loughlin, director of content and cloud product marketing at HDS. “Customers don’t want another silo to manage because they can’t realistically govern their data.”
Data protection has been significantly improved with this release.
“We have enhanced what we already had there,” Lundberg said, “In particular, the protection we had applied in previous releases to things in the sync ‘n’ share folder can now be extended to other folders, in order to extend the data protection capabilities, while still not allowing them to be shared with other people. Folders outside the sync folder will be copied to the same system. So now all the data is protected as well as shareable.”
Version 2.1 also adds self-service recovery of users’ files and folders.
Tanya Loughlin, director of content and cloud product marketing at HDS
“We use this internally as well, and we can move a huge amount of data with the user doing it themselves,” Loughlin said.
Security has been upgraded as well.
“We have designed new capabilities to replace the old FTP way of loading and sharing larger files while securing external uploads,” Lundberg said. “We have secure external data sharing with folders that have a link to partners outside your organization, which can now upload files back to you, where things go through a little quarantine area.”
Improvements from the mobility perspective include a new way of managing roles within the environment to assign permissions to different user sets.
“This would apply for example, in an audit role, where they can see usage activities but not files themselves,” Lundberg said.
“In addition, while we are not getting into mobile application management, from the device management side we now have given users the ability to wipe and lock and allow users to register themselves from their mobile phones.” Some additional language support has been added as well.
“This is also the first version of HCP Anywhere with the notion of a non-owned shared folder, which does not consume any individual user’s quotas and allows a team to set up a folder that multiple people can collaborate in, where it is not driven by any one user,” Lundberg said. “This creates the foundation for a more collaborative workspace, where groups of people can come in and collaborate.”
This concept will also be expanded going forward.
“More user interface elements will come in in the next year or so to give more capabilities to expand into areas like content management, compliance, and user file services,” Lundberg added.
This enhanced functionality is helping broaden the market for HCP Anywhere beyond its enterprise base, particularly through managed services partners,
“We are starting to get regional tier two managed service providers and cloud service providers who deliver differentiated services in their regions to sell this, by enabling more services for a more secure sync ‘n’ share,” Lundberg stated.
