It’s no longer newsworthy to simply state that everything is moving to the cloud. Cloud computing and cloud access from any device, anywhere, is becoming the new norm. The cloud that’s taken over today’s consumer market is being adapted for the enterprise, though it wasn’t built for this space — so security is a massive sticking point in this transition. Enter Egnyte and its file-server technology, a useful companion to Google Drive’s growing cloud service. Last week, Google and Egnyte announced that they are teaming up to make Google Drive more accessible as a platform for the enterprise.

The result of this team up on the Google Drive integration is a hybrid cloud that stores and syncs Google Drive content either through Egnyte’s servers or through on-premises storage from the likes of EMC, NetApp or NetGear. For the enterprise, its the best of both worlds: It’s a cloud-based service and it offers a level of control enterprises expect on the storage side. I had a chance to interview Sean Puttergill, Product Manager at Egnyte for the Google Drive integration efforts.  Read the full interview below:

If owning the data is paramount, how does private cloud storage inclusion of Google Drive help the enterprise? Does that give Google, a public cloud provider, access to my data?

“Biggest benefit is in removing the need for a user to navigate multiple file repositories. User can access all their files within a single namespace, whether physically placed on a NAS device, in the cloud or within Gdrive. As Gdocs are synchronized across cloud and devices, similar to any other mime type, user interaction is the same, i.e. network shares, cloud, mobile devices or desktop. Note that customer/user connects to an existing GDrive account, typically an enterprise account, and therefore already has an established trust relationship with Google.”

What is one area where private cloud storage could be improved at the enterprise level?

“Biggest missing piece in managing file services today is the lack of a platform that recognizes and satisfies the different use cases for different data subsets. Private cloud stores, and Public cloud stores as well, are being constructed in silos, resulting in unsatisfactory solutions for real world cases where strengths of both approaches needs to be preserved. Lack of secure integration between private cloud stores and public cloud stores is a major shortcoming.”

What is Egnyte doing to prepare the private cloud for the Internet of Things?

“We at Egnyte believe in using the right tool for the right task. Users should not have to move data into Public clouds (for example) to collaborate inside and outside the enterprise. Essentially, value should be added to content where it logically resides or compute should come to the data, and not the other way around. With the Internet of Things, data would need to be analyzed close to the edges rather than after collating in the cloud.”

Are there any issues localizing enterprise files on a private cloud that Egnyte is still working to fix?

We are currently in the process of integrating data subsets that must only reside behind a customer firewall, into a unified namespace. This will allow customers to truly pick and choose how different data sets should be treated: only local, only cloud or synchronized across sites.

Let me be clear, on-premise storage isn’t going away anytime soon, but you can see how cloud storage will provide more with less, and make some aspects easier. And Egnyte is a good example of is how companies building ground-up for the enterprise can do so as well. As technology advances, the enterprise can be slow to adapt. Egnyte sets the example that if you come out of the gate with a ready-made to service for not just one user but everyone in the organization, that’s a win in the enterprise.