Mobile File Access to the Corporate Intranet Gets Redefined by Bitzer

The way for enterprises to enter the next generation of remote access, productivity and connectivity is by offering their company access to corporate data and applications on personal mobile devices. These days, most enterprise applications are available from anywhere using a browser on a laptop. Unfortunately, the same security does not necessarily hold true when using a browser on mobile devices. There are still security holes that can be taken advantage of by troublemaking applications. This is one of the reasons that the adoption of these applications has been restricted by enterprises for mobile devices. 

Bitzer Mobile, Inc. is a company that was founded in 2010. Its headquarters are in Sunnyvale, CA. It provides a platform that allows IT personnel to mobilize existing enterprise applications very rapidly. They can do that securely by consolidating all enterprise data inside a secure container that is completely under their control. Once they mobilize an application, the user can interact with it from an iOS, Android or Blackberry device. IT does not have to worry about supporting multiple evolving platforms or creating custom mobile applications.

Recently, Bitzer announced the launch of m/Drive. It is an enterprise grade mobile application that enables secure direct access to corporate Intranet files from mobile devices. According to Bitzer, m/Drive is designed for enterprises to provide secure, authenticated access to Windows Network Intranet files from employee mobile devices, without the requirement of cloud-sync applications.

We have talked about the “always need to be connected” generation. This is also true in the workplace. Every day there are more companies that are allowing their employees to bring their own device to work. Of course this comes with a whole new set of problems. While you can use cloud computing options to move a lot of information around, I know of several people who have uploaded information to the cloud only to find that it actually got lost in the cloud!

Because of this, a lot of enterprise IT departments prefer that mobile employees access Intranet files directly from existing Windows file servers that have been provisioned by IT with role based access control. Unfortunately, it is very difficult because most mobile devices cannot necessarily log into a Windows Network without compromising network security.

Bitzer's patent pending technology enables smartphones and tablets to log into a Windows Network and access corporate file shares without compromising security by using true Kerberos SSO. Single sign-on, or SSO, is a property of access control of multiple related, but independent software systems. With this property, a user logs in once and can gain access to all systems without being prompted to log in again for each of them.

Bitzer m/Drive provides seamless browsing and transfer of Intranet files, as if employees were navigating using a local Windows drive. What makes it even more appealing is that it is available at a fraction of the cost for an enterprise license of popular cloud based file syncing products.

Enterprise Strategy Group, (ESG) is a company that does IT analysis, IT market research and IT product testing. Terri McClure, a senior analyst said, "The typical end user has 3 or more endpoint devices and they want to access their corporate data from all of them. But corporate data often lives on file servers or NAS devices locked behind a VPN. While some companies are putting data into the cloud to solve the access issue, there are terabytes of data sitting within an enterprise that is not moving to a cloud anytime soon. Bitzer has found a unique approach to enable end users to have safe, authenticated access to data while encrypting data-at-rest, in-transit and in-use. This addresses the security needs of security-minded companies and user experience sought by the employees.”

Some of the features and capabilities that Bitzer m/Drive offers are:

· Ability to access Intranet file servers from mobile devices using true Windows network login

· Ability to upload and download files, creation and deletion of folders on the share

· Ability to share a file using the integrated e-mail client as well as a built in editor for Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Word documents

· Integration with existing Windows authentication back-end using Active Directory for role-based access

· Out of the box integration with Bitzer’s BEAM platform, which includes e-mail, calendar, contacts, and a secure browser to the enterprise intranet

· Fine-grained policy based access control for a secure workspace; easy enforcement of data governance such as sharing, clipboard control, geo-fencing and time-based restriction

· Integrated app-tunnel for authorized access to Intranet, which eliminates need for wide-open VPN connectivity.

If you want to find out more information about Bitzer Mobile, Inc. or more details on the Bitzer m/Drive software, you can click here to access their site.