We had a great turnout for a panel discussion yesterday at Gartner’s Catalyst Conference in San Diego. More than 50 people wanted to hear about “Managing, Storing, and Safeguarding Unstructured Data in a Cloudy Regulated World.” Chris Preimesberger, Editor-in Chief of eWeek hosted a panel that included our own Matt Richards, ownCloud’s VP of Product, Brent Compton, Director of Storage and Big Data at Red Hat, Darin Andersen, CEO and Founder of CyberUnited, and Marc Clark, Director of Cloud Strategy and Deployment at Terradata.
The most interesting topic discussed was the trends each of the panelists are seeing: users want to access files wherever they are using any device WITHOUT creating additional data silos that need to be managed by IT. Mobile seems to be the way most companies are heading, making even the “deskless” workers connected. And, transparency – pushing down the cost of entry so that even small businesses have the tools of Fortune 1000 companies available to them.
Marc Clark had one of the most interesting observations, though – while most companies have a “cloud mandate” – the cloud may not be the right move for that organization. His advice – don’t move to the cloud because everyone else is. Be true to what you’re trying to accomplish.
Couldn’t agree more!
Of course we also talked about trends in this world. Matt laid out what we are seeing in the market – that it is no longer all about File Sync and Share. This is really too narrow a look at the problem. The problem is users want access to their files, no matter where they are. Enterprises are increasingly looking to solve the problem of file access and control, not just file sync and share – which is just the front end of the problem. More and more data in more silos – users want a single place to go to access them all, and IT needs the capability to control that access.
Of course, that’s what we do at ownCloud – provide universal access to files, with IT in firm control over company data.
