GroupLogic, a secure enterprise file sharing and syncing solutions provider, is all about responding quickly to customer demands for product features. On September 13th, Acronis announced it had acquired GroupLogic.
In our previous installment of this interview series, we examined how GroupLogic engages in “customer development” in lieu of product development to integrate customer-driven innovations into its products. In Part 4, we take a look at GroupLogic’s strategic partnerships with other companies to create products that fulfill very specific needs for customers.
Joshua: What’s the value and why are you partnered with CommVault?
Anders: We’re partnered with CommVault for one specific thing: We have a product called ArchiveConnect, which is part of ExtremeZ-IP. It basically helps you manage archiving with Macintosh clients, and basically helps address all the problems people have with archiving data that sits on the Mac–not the Mac, but with the CommVault archiving product.
We do the same thing with Symantec‘s KVS Enterprise Vault. So that’s the nature of that relationship. I would say that that relationship is very specific to that product.
And it’s important for those customers who are doing archiving–but traditionally if you’re doing archiving you’re probably in some kind of regulated space and it’s deemed important. But I would say our relationship with them is specific to that particular opportunity.
Joshua: What’s the value and why are you partnered with Quantum around StorNext?
Anders: That’s a completely different relationship. And actually that relationship is only exactly a year old. I think we announced it February of last year.
That relationship is we have taken the ExtremeZ-IP product … the product we’re most well known for, for sure, and we have created a special version that is embedded into their storage product to allow them to eliminate all the problems associated with storage that sits on Mac, to be able to use their StorNext platform. That’s the name of the product.
It’s a scale-out NAS [network-attached storage] solution. You’re probably familiar with it. So there’s a specific client which is called the GroupLogic LAN Client for StorNext.
Joshua: Is the Quantum integration supporting a tiering model with the StorNext file system that extends itself to the Mac environment by way of your ExtremeZ-IP?
Anders: Exactly. And so StorNext plays in a lot of these areas where Macs are prevalent, like the scale-out NAS. So, video stuff–inevitably you’ve got some people using Macs in that process somewhere. And so that’s why it’s important to them and important to us.
Joshua: What’s the value and why are you partnered with Oracle?
Anders: Oracle–we’re embedding some of their technology into some of our products. So, I believe today that is SQLite. That’s basically the relationship there.
So, it’s stuff that we embed. No end user ever sees–I shouldn’t say they don’t ever see it, because the administrators and [others] use it. But that’s the basis of that relationship.
The partnership is most relevant to our file management and file movement technology. We OEM Oracle technology in part of that offering. The product name is called MassTransit.
Joshua: What’s the value and why are you partnered with MobileIron?
Anders: MobileIron is a mobile device management vendor. What I’m going to say here will broadly apply to the Good Technology relationship too, although it is slightly different.
Both these guys are mobile device management vendors. Mobile device management vendors basically deal with devices.
When you talk to the end users, yeah they care about the devices they want to manage, but they also care about the data that goes into those devices. That’s mobile file management. That’s where we come in.
So we, along with MobileIron and Good Technology, fundamentally believe that MDM [mobile device management] and MFM [mobile file management] are basically complementary solutions. The customers actually need both.
The relationships we established with both those companies were borne out of the fact that they were having customers asking them for this type of functionality. They weren’t providing it, obviously, so they went out looking … and we were able to establish those relationships. I would term them as both a co-marketing relationship at this point
[For the] Good Technology relationship, everything I just said about MobileIron also applies. But there, we’re part of the Good Dynamics platform, which you might be familiar with. It’s basically the secure container environment that they provide, and we’re basically part of that.
That relationship is big for us because they’re big in government installations, for example, as well as in a lot of regulated industries. That’s where mobilEcho plays very well.
MobileIron, also, they’re just doing gangbusters of business. So these are important vendors for us to be partnered with. And they are generally number one or number two in that industry, depending on whom you believe.
In Part 1 of this series, GroupLogic shares how it approaches the market for “enterprise file sharing” or what DCIG has been calling File-Sync-and-Share.
In Part 2 of this series, we explore
licensing options and how the enterprise mobility space has opened up a
new market for GroupLogic.
In Part 3 of this series, we look at how GroupLogic integrates customer-driven innovations into
its products to stay ahead of the enterprise file share and sync curve.
In Part 5 of this interview series, we look at how GroupLogic helps organizations manage and wipe data off their users’ mobile devices without touching the users’ personal apps. As well, we dig into some of the company’s other strategic partnerships.