Terri McClure, Senior Analyst, ESG, recently talked to Dave Vellante and Jeff Frick at theCUBE at just concluded EMC World 2014, in which she spoke on changing role in IT, increase in enterprise file sharing and the role of EMC’s Syncplicity in enterprises.

The interview started with Vellante asked the current trends of file sharing in corporate world. McClure said corporate File sharing application usage is expanding throughout organizations. She said that online file sharing and collaboration application usage was limited to departmental or groups, but over the last years more and more organizations using sync and share applications in the cloud to collaborate.

McClure shared a research paper that her company produces in which she said that “bulk of the deployment out there for business usage case is cloud based.” Almost 84 percent of people are using either a public or hybrid cloud for file sharing. But most interestingly, among the group that use cloud services, 97 percent of people want to use on-premises for collaboration.

She provided the reason for people going in-house is that enterprises have invested heavily in their IT infrastructure, and they want to leverage it.

“Customers made big investment in Isilon, big investment in NetAPP, existing file storage system, document management systems like SharePoint, Documentum, and they are not going to throw that away because people need mobile access to their data.”

McClure added customers are increasingly interested in the ability to integrate solutions with their existing storage solutions through hybrid or private cloud online file sharing deployments, and want increased flexibility with other existing tools.

Unlock the data with Syncplicity

At EMC World 2014, there was plenty of talk about EMC’s Syncplicity file-sharing product. In a mobile world, where employees want to be able to access files without VPN at their smartphones, the file sharing and sync market continues to taking momentum. McClure said that Syncplicity’s cloud-based file management lets enterprise users securely access and synchronize files and use applications on various devices.

EMC Syncplicity users will now be able to access and share content via mobile devices, regardless of where files reside. She said EMC has announced the Syncplicity Connector for SharePoint, which allows you to access SharePoint files directly from the Syncplicity app installed on mobile devices: This allows remote workers to use a single interface to access data by increasing productivity and efficiency. Another important aspect is the public release of InfoArchive, a suite dedicated to the storage of data agnostic applications that optimizes the flow of documents, reducing complexity and therefore lowering the cost and level of risk.

Security concerns post Snowden

McClure said Syncplicity, which competes with services such as Box and Dropbox, is designed to help enterprises make content easily available. But when it comes to security, stronger rights management tools and putting strict controls on how people can use those files are still missing. EMC needs to explore as how to capture, control and manage all the data that are leaking out from enterprises.

When asked about the Box S-1 report, she said only 7 percent of its 25 million users are paying users and rest are free users. People are concerned about security post Snowden effect and EU customers don’t want to place a data center in US. It is important to understand what is behind these numbers and what Box and other file sharing providers can do to drive revenue up and costs down.