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CTERA's cloudy gateway gets sync 'n' share bolted on

Cloud storage jungle shenanigans

Life in the cloud storage gateway jungle gets tougher and tougher as cloud file sync 'n' sharers invade the storage gateway space. CTERA is taking on the file sync'ers directly.

It's combined its cloud storage gateway with file sync 'n' share for business users in central, branch and remote offices, covering access from desktops, notebooks, tablets or their smart phones.

The CTERA v5.0 Enterprise Data Services Platform has had features added to fit the needs of data protection, file sharing and synchronisation, remote and branch offices (ROBO) and mobile users. The feature list includes:

  • Integration with anti-malware software
  • Data loss prevention
  • Mobility management tools (EMM)
  • VDI (Secure WebDav Map Drive) and Windows phone user support added to existing Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS and Android systems support
  • Hyper-V, OpenStack support
  • Azure and and Softlayer support
  • Optional LAN access
  • Integration with Outlook (plug-in) and integrated document editing for Chrome and Windows
  • Online document viewer for nearly 50 new document formats, including Microsoft Office files, medical images, CAD documents, and high-resolution graphics
  • User avatars
  • Drag and drop file uploads
  • Single Sign-on with and without Active Directory
  • Pinning of data to ROBO appliances to combat lousy net connection speeds
  • New schema for file management and collaboration; file versioning in browse history
  • HGST, HP Helion Content Depot, NetApp ONTAP, and NetApp StorageGrid on-premises storage support

CTERA says its product now has "all-new, beautiful and simple consumer-grade data services" that will hopefully help eliminate shadow IT.

Looking at the feature list above, which is a partial list by the way, indicates the amount of work required to cover all the bases of central, remote and branch office users across the panoply of their devices from PCs to smart phones.

CTERA has decided it wants to own the cloud storage interface for business users and be all-embracing, not wanting cloud file sync 'n' share suppliers, who offer dedicated cloud storage gateways, to expand into their market.

In a world where business apps are moving to the cloud, every storage facility with a cloud backend becomes a cloud gateway and every public cloud supplier will offer its own gateway functionality. Competition in this jungle is ratcheting up with a vengeance.

CTERA is a rich cloud edge device supplier that's anticipating, we think, more and more apps migrating to the cloud. It hopes it has struck the right balance between offering CIO's feature-breadth and control, and users consumer-class simplicity and ease-of-use.

It hopes it has pulled this off and positioned itself as the best doorway in the cloud storage gateway jungle through which business users can access the cloud stuff they want. ®

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