Secure file services specialist CTERA Networks updated its cloud data management capabilities for its Portal to help businesses implement file service and data protection strategies.
The enhancements to the company’s platform are designed to help IT organizations migrate data across data centers and cloud infrastructure, optimize storage infrastructure costs through intelligent file management and simplify user access to enterprise data through new identity management integrations.
“Our customers are increasingly looking to reduce the amount of friction related to storing their data in private and on-premises and virtual private cloud environments,” CTERA’s senior vice president of marketing Jeff Denworth told eWEEK. “For a variety of reasons—ranging from cost considerations, to data privacy, to business continuity strategy and even to a broader application agenda—customers are continually evaluating options regarding their cloud strategy and optimizing their deployment models based upon an evolving set of priorities.”
The platform is powered by CTERA’s cloud service delivery middleware. IT-as-a-service (ITaaS) organizations leverage this middleware to create, deliver and manage cloud storage-based services such as enterprise file sync and share (EFSS), in-cloud data protection, endpoint and remote server backup and office storage modernization.
Any organization moving data within or across clouds needs assurance that their files are protected and secure, Denworth noted.
“With CTERA, no third party ever has access to your data, keys, authentication, etc.,” he said. “We’ve developed the CTERA Platform to enable distributed enterprise organizations to protect and manage files across endpoints, offices and clouds—and to do so from within their on-premises or virtual on-premises cloud storage. While the themes of data-migration and storage-tiering tools might grab more attention within this release, we’ve also continued to evolve our global security management story.”
Portal supports user authentication through the platform’s Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 capabilities.
“With our SAML integration, IT organizations can centrally manage corporate user identity management and provide SSO (single sign-on) login capabilities for file and backup access,” Denworth said.
It also integrates with multiple SSO offerings to simplify user access across multiple devices, with CTERA offering certified compatibility with SSO providers including Microsoft ADFS 2.0, Okta, OneLogin and Ping Identity.
“We’ll see organizations continue to adopt multicloud strategies that offer a combination of preserving price optionality and business continuity,” Denworth said. “And conversely, In the future, we expect enterprises will ensure business continuity for applications running on cloud IaaS (infrastructure as a service) by choosing a backup platform that supports a variety of cloud storage APIs so that it’s easy to backup to any IaaS or on-premises object storage of choice.”