AppSense, the NewYork based company focussed on Virtualization solutions, today announced their research wing, AppSense Labs, focussed on bridging the gap between personal services and enterprise. They also announced their first product under AppSense Labs called DataLocker (iTunes link for iPad and iPhone). This got my attention for two reasons:
- As the so called consumerization of enterprise gains momentum, the IT departments are going to face tremendous pressure to support the consumer services which might not meet enterprise standards of security. If they don’t support such services, enterprises users are anyhow going to bypass their instructions and user services like Dropbox. It is a much bigger nightmare than actually supporting these consumer services. A tool like DataLocker can help IT tackle this problem
- People love Dropbox but somehow I never got to like the service like many other pundits in the wild. Part of my reluctance is the trust factor. I just didn’t like how they handled one security issue and a privacy debacle in the past. I am pretty sure the service is well matured now but I still couldn’t come to trust them (yet). A tool like DataLocker can help people like me trust cloud services (or in some cases cloud itself) which we never managed to trust.
DataLocker boosts trust by eliminating concerns people have about consumer cloud services by encrypting sensitive information without sacrificing the convenience offered by cloud based services. They are releasing apps for Windows, Mac and iOS devices. The app can be downloaded here.
Will solutions like DataLocker change how enterprise IT views these consumer services? I don’t think so. It is not going to change overnight and enterprise IT expect more features than mere encryption, like features that will still keep them in control over the data. However, tools such as DataLockers can help avoid nightmarish scenarios which will happen otherwise. We will have to wait and see how these tools get adopted in the enterprise.
