Your employees may look to the cloud as they face difficulties accessing traditional file servers from mobile devices. They may already use some consumer file sharing and sync solutions such as Dropbox or Office 365 and using those solutions in an ad-hoc way to solve temporary file sharing needs from here and there. Company files may have been copied out to a personal Dropbox folder for easy sharing or may have been sent over emails as attachments for easy access when it is outside of the company firewall. Without knowing exactly where are the files, it is a pretty severe data security problem.
As if data security was not a big enough problem, leaking file server data to a 3rd party service is a major problem too. Businesses can't control where the files are. Nor can they control who has access to once the data ownership change hands.
Employees love Dropbox because it is so simple to use as compared to traditional VPN (virtual private network) ways of accessing data on company file servers. A ban on Dropbox won't be effective unless there is an easier alternative solution that address the data ownership, data security and data privacy problems. CentreStack provides a way for you to maintain control by leveraging your existing file servers as data repository and your existing Active Directories as identity service provider for the enterprise file sharing solution that is similar to Dropbox.
After the CentreStack server is deployed, employees can use web browsers, mobile applications and even PC and Macs to access existing file shares. On PCs, the familiar locally mapped drive interface and file locking behavior are preserved. The process is so seamless that users generally require no downtime and minimal, if any training.
Gladinet provides a Windows Installer package that creates private enterprise file sharing servers based on Microsoft server technology. It’s easy to install, manage, and scale. The installation time is short with a few clicks from start to finish.
Automatically use existing identities and home shares from Active Directory. Existing NTFS permissions on file and folders are checked natively by the Windows Operating System.
The entire solution can be deployed and managed on-premise. Every component is under control from the backend file servers and Active Directories to front end agent softwares on user's devices.
Leverage DFS or any other local storage service as data repository, whether it be D: drive or E: drive from local disks or from iSCSI interface or file shares from local area network.
Provide remote HTTPS (SSL) web access to files stored behind the firewall using any device without using a VPN or public cloud.
Create a private sync and share solution based on object storage like OpenStack Swift, any S3 compatible, Microsoft Azure and more.
Without providing an enterprise file sharing service to employees, the employees may select consumer cloud file sharing solutions like Dropbox to share files. Dropbox may provide productivity and cost benefits but often fail to provide comfortable answers to questions like, “Where, exactly, is my data? Who has access to it? What will they do with it?” And these concerns don’t just involve cyber-threats and hackers but competitors, foreign nationals, and even governments.
As if uncertainty about the data ownership situations is not enough, IT administrators must also consider the following implied directives:
CentreStack eliminates the common drawbacks of remote file server access and cloud file sharing solutions and provides the best of both worlds – the privacy, security and control of legacy file servers combined with the efficiency and productivity gains of cloud collaboration. In addition to the existing features such as locally mapped drive, on-demand synchronization and file locking, businesses will also gain the following modern file sharing features.
CentreStack integrates with Office 365 for web-based co-editing and co-authoring.
Use Outlook integration to transfer large folder or files as web links via email.
Use web links to share files and folders with recipients or to receive files.
Define different permissions for folders at different levels of the directory structure.
Web based secure data room allows view-only access with download disabled.
From internal Active Directory users to external clients and partners, you can define user rights for folder sharing.
Cloud migration may seem increasingly inevitable, making it difficult to manage the tensions between productivity benefits and data privacy threats. But CentreStack offers a solution for thought leaders seeking to simplify the way people work without compromising data privacy.
Whether it's private sharing for on-prem and remote workers, external clients, partners or guest users in general, CentreStack has the flexibility to provide a great solution!