Today, we launched Syncplicity for Android, which includes a release for Amazon’s Kindle Fire. In advance of this release, and on the heels of the iPad and iPhone releases earlier this year, we’ve spent a lot of time talking to customers about how they see their use of mobile evolving. What is abundantly clear is that users are demanding increasingly rich and more sophisticated interactions with all their files across mobile devices, and that the concern about security of data on mobile devices is growing. We also see that businesses are dividing into two camps around how to manage the explosion of diverse mobile device usage throughout their companies: “Lock It Down” or “Protect by Enabling.”
While growth in the mobile market has sky-rocketed over the past three years, it pales in comparison to what is coming. By 2013, 1 billion smart phones will be in use worldwide, according to Informa Telecoms and Media. Frost & Sullivan forecasts that 300 million tablets will be in the market by 2015, outpacing the growth rate of both PCs and smart phones. research2guidance sees the mobile applications market growing from nearly $2 billion a year ago to $15 billion in 2013. As much as mobile has grown, the market is far from full maturity, with mobile apps revenue expected to grow a head-spinning 7x in just two years.
One interesting aspect of this growth is that once someone gets a third device, like an iPad added to their laptop and home computer, or a Droid phone added to their iPad and Mac, the need for a seamless way to have files managed – synced, shareable, automatically backed up and always there when and where you need them, no planning or specific computer or device required – becomes more acute. Those 3+ device users who are also interacting with cloud apps like Google Docs and corporate servers like SharePoint feel the pain of disparate silos of data even more. One customer explained it to me this way:
“Everything is a file and I live in my files, not on a particular computer, phone, tablet, cloud app or corporate network. I don’t want to move files around, worry about putting them in a Dropbox, Box or another cloud silo I have to manage. Or to check them out of SharePoint and put them somewhere else to get universal sync, access, sharing and protection. I just want all that to work without thinking about it. I keep my files where I like to keep my files. Now give me a way to do whatever I want to do with all those files ad hoc, from anywhere.”
Another customer, John Johansen at Agile Technologies, articulated the need for instant gratification with mobile apps: "The Syncplicity Android App helped me look great in front of a client within hours of downloading it.”
Users want to see value they can measure within hours, not days or weeks.
With the explosive growth in mobility and cloud computing, users increasingly expect to use mobile devices as a primary way of seamlessly accessing and interacting fully with their files and information. Gartner anticipates that mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common web access device worldwide in a few short years. And 85% of our business customers tell us that universal access, sharing and rich interactions with their files from mobile devices is important to them. Simple mobile access to files no longer cuts it. Our customers don’t want to be forced to plan ahead – what files might I need, manually moving files into a new cloud silo of data –- or to use work-arounds – such as emailing documents to themselves to ensure ad hoc mobile access, and thus making email the de facto yet very limited mobile file manager. And despite the disparate array of mobile devices with their varying capabilities, users want the same rich and compelling way to “live in their files” on any device. The majority of our business customers support an array of mobile devices: 60% have iPads, 70% iPhones, 50% Android phones, 20% Droid tablets, 40% Blackberries and so on. And individual users are also adopting a host of mobile devices with varying capabilities. The line between personal and business use on mobile is blurring.
At the company level, businesses of all sizes (not just larger businesses!) hammer into us what they need: a better way to manage mobile use as it relates to their valuable corporate data, and to secure it while enabling highly productive mobile access. Just as important is an easy way to provision, administer and support users while complying with whatever data policies they have. This brings us back to discussing the two camps: The “protect by enabling” camp and the “lock it down” camp.
Most of our customers to date fall in the “protect by enabling” camp. Yesterday in a meeting, an organization with 7,500 employees and contractors shared this: “Your solution is very helpful in our ‘bring your own device’ strategy. We’re in the midst of a transformation in IT. Users demand the tools and gadgets they want and we intend to support those demands. We have iPads, iPhones, Android, and we’re now at 40% of users with Macs alongside PCs. Our policy with IT security is to protect by enabling.” In this spirit he also shared that “because your app runs on Kindle Fire, we will go out and buy some!” You may be surprised to hear that this customer is a part of a large federal government agency, usually thought of as squarely in the “lock it down” camp. They are no less committed to security than the lock it down group, but have determined that they can better protect information by leveraging secure cloud and mobility solutions, and enabling users within their compliance guidelines -- even when those include the stringent International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Export Administration Regulations (EAR). I would have never guessed a year ago that a federal government agency would be looking to the latest Kindle as a device to access their SharePoint or laptop-stored files through Syncplicity . I think customers will continue to surprise us with the innovative ways they are deploying the new technologies and the velocity at which they will adopt new solutions.
The “lock it down” camp has strong compliance requirements in mind as they move to the cloud and embrace mobility trends—from eDiscovery and regulatory to business and security policies. This group is not allowing ad hoc use of mobile devices, computers or new cloud apps, and instead will select and provision what IT has chosen as the standard. IT in these organizations intends to control and monitor what devices are allowed into the org, where their employees can sync corporate data, if files and folders can be shared outside of the corporate domain, and will deploy other security and monitoring features that will enable them to comply with regulatory, reporting or other requirements while also giving users universal file access and sharing to better do their jobs.
IT’s over-arching need in this camp is a straight-forward and universal way to do all this across all the computers, mobile devices, cloud apps they authorize and corporate file servers they use. Mobility and the potential security challenges mobile devices can pose is of particular concern to these organizations. A global consulting firm we work with, which has over 4,000 employees, told us that to meet contractual commitments with their public company and government clients, and to comply with their stringent corporate standards, they need good visibility and control of where client data goes, in addition to certifications like SAS70 Type II, PCI and DSS compliance. All while supporting ubiquitous mobile access of confidential corporate data so their mobile professionals can work collaboratively and securely, wherever they are. In another example, a prospective customer with nearly 20,000 employees we’re in dialog with has looked to use Moka5 LivePC (with which we are integrated) in conjunction with Syncplicity to better and more fully “lock down” and protect their corporate data.
All this has led us to some key decisions in our mobile offerings.
- We will stay away from the paradigm that forces users to set up and then re-organize a new silo and subset of their data into a cloud box or otherwise, from all the other places they already keep files today, in order to get mobile, cloud app and multi-computer and device access to all their files and folders. Ours is not a “drag, drop then sync or share” solution. It is a “set up once, then sync, share, collaboration and back up is just there wherever you want it” solution. A little more complicated to explain, a lot easier and more feature rich to use in the long run.
- We will continue down the path of providing increased security, control and IT administration capabilities. Today, we’re the only mobile app in our space to provide features like encryption of “at rest” data on mobile devices, along with remote wipe of Syncplicity user credentials and data stored on mobile devices if they are lost or stolen. Our back-end with our partner Amazon Web Services carries all the certifications required so that anyone from a single user to a large government agency or public company can meet their stringent compliance and security guidelines for data storage, and we store data 4x in 3 data centers delivering 11 9’s of durability of customer – nobody can live with losing data in the cloud as a trade-off to universal mobile access.
- We will strongly support businesses of all sizes and needs, including both the “Lock it Down” and the “Protect by Enabling” camps.
- We believe universal access means universal access: Your SharePoint data should be readily accessible from your Kindle Fire or iPad without using a VPN, just as easily as the files you left on your computers or in Google Docs. You should have the latest versions of your files and shared files no matter where you are, and who last changed them. And on mobile, your newsfeed should tell you what’s going on with the files you care about so you can be more productive.
- We will further innovate architecturally because sync and access in the mobile world is tricky (use of bandwidth, battery life, etc.) and we are committed to leveraging our core sync technology intelligently as we continue down the path of providing the best mobile experience possible for our users.
- We will support the major mobile device platforms with native apps and not HTML5. We know this will deliver the best and most intuitive apps that uniquely take advantage of what each device offers. We will continue to frequently iterate on these like we did with our mobile newsfeed, as we learn more about what our users want.
We’ve learned a lot over the past months from our customers and partners and are grateful for all the feedback so far. Please keep it coming. We’re proud that our mobile apps are among the highest rated in the various app stores, and that our Business Edition customers rewarded us this month with a 91% customer satisfaction rating. We’re thrilled about the response – but like our customers, we’re not complacent and are always looking forward to the next innovation.
Click here to learn more about Syncplicity Mobile offerings today. And tell us what you are thinking!
Karen White
CEO
