Backup and Recovery Functionality Available through Intermedia's SecuriSync

By Joe Rizzo
Contributing Writer

The business model for many organizations has changed over the years. With corporate policies of bringing your own devices (BYOD) to use as workforce tools, and voice over IP (VoIP) options, the way that information is accessed and shared has dramatically changed.

File sharing and synchronization (FSS) have become the popular trend. What was once a cost saving option for SMBs has now found a place in the enterprise. The need for sharing information in today’s enterprise has gone beyond what traditional systems can offer, which makes FSS tools among the most popular applications used in the work place.

The shift to Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing (EFSS) allows for a more distributed model where different employees and groups can remotely create, edit, and distribute files. This can be accomplished across various platforms and devices in real time.

Intermedia (News - Alert) is a service provider offering Office in the Cloud, a suite of hosted business applications. While the initial offering saw a lot of interest in the SMB community recent tool enhancements, such as the addition of backup and recovery features, have piqued the interest of larger enterprises.

The growth seen by Intermedia over the past few years has mainly come from SMBs in the healthcare, legal and financial industries. Intermedia is engaged as a Microsoft (News - Alert) gold partner and reseller of Office 365 applications (including hosted Exchange), which are supported as features within the Office in the Cloud portfolio. The company is now ready to focus on the enterprise market.

A main area of concern in this market is creating a reliable, solid corporate backup strategy. FSS can lead to a lot of inconsistencies when it comes to storage and backup. One of the new enhancements is a supported feature set which will allow companies to create a cohesive storage strategy or to entirely reallocate all backups to Intermedia’s cloud.

As more employees use their own devices and work away from the office, the chance of misplacing or losing a device increases. It is with this in mind that one of the options offered by SecuriSync allows for a remote wipe of a lost device, disallowing access to documents and files from a compromised endpoint.

Most IT administrators will look to these new features as time and data-saving options since no file can be entirely deleted without administrative approval. In addition, since files are being backed up in real time, changed data or lost files are no longer a concern. The additional file functionality further reduces depen­dency on multiple applications, simplifying the workflow process for users. For those responsible for the company budget, they will appreciate that the new backup and restore features will be provided without any change in the current pricing.