Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/01/18/syncplicity_isilon_atmos/

EMC fires anti-Dropbox torpedo to sink off-site biz clouds

In Syn'city, the IT bosses rule the data

By Chris Mellor

Posted in Storage, 18th January 2013 12:17 GMT

Data centre haunter EMC is testing its Isilon and Atmos storage systems with Syncplicity - the corporate-friendly Dropbox contender it bought in May.

EMC gobbled Syncplicity specifically for its ability to share content and synchronise files in businesses' private clouds.

It's hoped workers will be able to pass around sensitive materials on their various smart mobile devices without corporate content controllers losing track of which user was accessing which document. This can happen when employees get the Dropbox habit and protected company information accidentally leaks into the wild with admin staff having no idea who's seeing what.

EMC integrated Syncplicity with Documentum in November so that the latter's content could be shared with Syncplicity users.

Now the next step in its steadily evolving strategy has been revealed in a trial involving Isilon scale-out filers and Atmos object storage backends. Customers store their sharable files in their own data centres, using the Isilon or Atmos kit, and Syncplicity provides Dropbox-equivalent file sharing through a private cloud with corporate visibility and security; the files don't have to go off-site to a third-party sync'n'share provider.

Customers can store their data objects on the premises rather than duplicating them in an off-site vault. Corporate IT has control of the storage layer using Syncplicity.

Users have the ability to edit a local copy of a file on their off-net smart device and then have it sync'd back up to the data centre when they reconnect, EMC said.

EMC's VNX, VMAX and Centera storage offerings are not included in the beta trial. It's interesting that both Isilon and Atmos storage are highly scalable; is file sync 'n share going to that popular? ®