Looking at the multi-billion dollar revenue opportunity, many vendors claiming to be Enterprise File Sync & Share (EFSS) providers have emerged. Most of them focus only on the end-user features but lack the enterprise security, controls and visibility required by businesses to ensure protection from data loss, security and compliance risks.
This is part 3 of the “Comparing Top 5 Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) and Mobile Collaboration Solutions” series of posts, where we are comparing Vaultize with Accellion, Citrix ShareFIle, EMC Syncplicity and Watchdox – which we believe have enterprise-grade controls and have also found place in Gartner’s EFSS Magic Quadrant. In this series, we will do the comparisons mainly from an enterprise IT perspective; from the end-user perspective, all the solutions are almost at par.
In the previous part (part 2) of this series, we compared Accellion and Vaultize, giving you a perspective on why Vaultize is superior to Accellion.
Holistic Approach
The first and biggest advantage of Vaultize is the information-centric holistic platform approach towards security, control and visibility through built-in data loss prevention (DLP), digital rights management (DRM), data protection (backup/restore) and enterprise mobility management (EMM) capabilities. This means, irrespective of how the corporate content is being accessed, used (for example, edit and annotate) or shared by the end-users and irrespective of the device being used, everything complies with the IT defined policies, ensuring corporate compliance – even when the content goes beyond the corporate boundaries and to the devices beyond IT control. This is the first and foremost reason why large enterprises – even in highly regulated and security-conscious verticals – trust Vaultize.
In this context, Syncplicity’s (acquired by EMC in 2012) approach is short sighted and significantly lacks these security, data loss prevention and mobility management capabilities. This is the main reason why EMC is not able to help Syncplicity penetrate into their large enterprise customer base.
Security
Vaultize performs military-grade AES 256-bit encryption together with content-aware smart de-duplication at source (that is, on the data creation device itself) before transmitting the data - without solely relying on SSL (because SSL is prone to attacks). This effectively builds a secure tunnel and provides source-to-destination and cradle-to-grave security. As a result, VPN, which leads to poor and frustrating end-user experience, is not required for access, sharing and mobility.
EMC Syncplicity relies solely on SSL for encrypting the communication channel to secure data from source to server to destination and so, needs VPN or additional tunnelling.
Access Controls and Tracking
Vaultize provides corporate IT complete control on the access to corporate content at the level of a user, data source and the data. With Vaultize Digital Rights Management (DRM), the access rights travel along with the data ensuring that corporate IT has full control and tracking on access and use (like edit, copy/paste, print etc.) of data even when it goes to external or third parties. Additionally, IT can create security fence around corporate data such that it is accessible or usable only from certain IPs and/or geographical locations.
EMC Syncplicity provides no such controls, rights management or tracking. This is a significant disadvantage for regulated and security-sensitive organization.
Online Document Viewer
Vaultize Online Document Viewer allows viewing of shared files within the web browser itself while allowing IT to control things like copy-paste, printing, screenshots and email. It enables IT to apply content/information level controls on data, going beyond simple file or folder-level controls. Text, image or email based digital watermarking further reduces chances of data leakage.
EMC Syncplicity has no such capabilities.
Sharing Controls
Both EMC Syncplicity and Vaultize provide IT with good controls over sharing. Vaultize gives additional controls in terms of with whom the documents can be shared (like IP ranges, domains and geographical locations) and also provides ability to enforce information rights even after the files are downloaded by third-party (through DRM / IRM).
Outlook Plugin
The Vaultize Plugin for Microsoft Outlook replaces email attachments with secure links - freeing up email storage (both in PST/mailbox and email server) and network bandwidth. All shared files are securely stored only once on Vaultize server/cloud and a link is automatically inserted in the email. Corporate IT can also set policies for auto-conversion of attachments to secure links.
EMC Syncplicity does not provide this feature that can significantly reduce the cost of storage – particularly the high-end storage used for Exchange Server.
Mobility Management Controls
Both EMC Syncplicity and Vaultize provide some form of Mobility Management controls. But some capabilities like control on copy-paste/printing on mobile editor, data containerization and automatic wiping based on IP/Geo location are not available in EMC Synplicity.
Data Loss Prevention and Data Protection
Vaultize provides endpoint DLP capabilities (encryption and remote wiping) for both mobile devices and laptops / desktops, while EMC Syncplicity does it only for mobile devices. Vaultize encrypts files and folders on Windows laptops/desktops to protect data from unauthorized access and includes the ability to remotely wipe data in case the device is compromised, lost or stolen. The remote wiping also works automatically based on user inactivity, IP and geographical location.
Vaultize provides IT to define data protection policies to regularly backup not only simple files but also open and large-size files like Outlook PST. That means wherever the corporate contents are, they are fully protected, irrespective of whether they are being accessed and shared. EMC Syncplicity provides versioning only for shared files and does not support open files.
Efficiency
Vaultize performs content-aware smart de-duplication across all the users and devices in the organization. This significantly reduces the network traffic as well as the storage requirement at the server. Global de-duplication plays an important role in making data transfer efficient when the end-user is roaming beyond corporate perimeter on a low bandwidth network. This, along with no-VPN, enormously improves end-user experience and hence the productivity.
EMC Syncplicity has very limited de-duplication capabilities.
End-user Features
Both EMC Syncplicity and Vaultize have good end-user UI/UX.
Deployment Options
Lastly, Vaultize provides an additional deployment option - purpose-built appliance series, in addition to private-cloud/on-premise and public-cloud.
Overall, Vaultize is built on a holistic information-centric approach where corporate content is completely under IT control and visibility irrespective of where it is, who uses it and from which device. Rather than binding an end-user to a specific device, it provides anywhere, anytime and any-device access, use, sharing and control of data – enhancing user experience and productivity.
Look at Why Vaultize to know the reasons why enterprise IT loves us.
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