Egnyte Local Cloud moves the Cloud file server back into the office

A few months ago, I detailed an excellent "file server in the Cloud" application called Egnyte.  In a nutshell,  Egnyte is a secure Software as a Service that takes the place of your file server, FTP Server and backup.   It also offers file versioning and collaboration beyond what you'd find in your everyday NAS product.  This is great for small businesses who might have moved other aspects of their IT infrastructure to the Cloud already (ie. messaging servers to Gmail) but still have to keep that server room running for their file server.

When set up, Egnyte looks like a local disk to both Mac and PC users.  For smaller files, most people don't even realize that they are pulling data from the Cloud.  It works great for virtual offices or places where people are geographically disparate. 

The downsides are that, being in the Cloud, you are an Internet pipe away from your data.  This means that your data access is slower and less reliable than your local file server.  It is also on "someone else's server" – for many reasons, it always feels better to have physical access to your files.

Egnyte heard those concerns and addressed them in one fell swoop with the "Local Cloud".  What they've done is  allowed you to sync your Egnyte shares to local servers/shares.  Therefore, while you are in the office, you'll have LAN speed to your data.  However, while you are on the road, you'll have access to that same data on Egnyte's big pipes.  People in other offices, remote workers and clients/vendors will also have access to the Egnyte share.

The Local Cloud is fairly simple and straight forward to set up.  If you are a small business just getting started, I recommend starting out with an empty share on both Egnyte and the local server.  Then, rather than moving data from client machines, just move your current server share to the new Egnyte Local Cloud. 

For those already on Egnyte, get a nice big file share and point the Local Cloud to it.  After you hit the synchronize button, your data will start to flow down to your local server. Once your data makes it there, You can share the data sharepoint with local clients for super-fast access to your data. You can also run backups on the local share or archive the data as you (or Sarbanes Oxely) see fit.

Egnyte Local Cloud is a two-way sync so it updates data going both ways and is fairly quick at keeping your server up to date with the Realtime Synchronization setting.  However, your first sync will likely be a long one.  I recommend using their daily syncs and run them while your company is out of the office (unless you want to use the web at dial-up speed during the first sync).  Once that first sync is complete, the realtime sync can be used without taxing your Internet connection.   If it does slow down your Internet access,  you can decrease the percentage of bandwidth that Egnyte uses in the preferences.

With the addition of the Local Cloud service, Egnyte can now be deployed at businesses who need on-site access to their data and the ability to do local backups.  It is hard to think of a reason not to give it a try.