EMC Corporation on Thursday  announced beta availability of EMC’s Syncplicity cloud-based online file sharing service with the option for customers to use either EMC Isilon scale-out NAS or EMC Atmos object-based storage.

Now customers can store their files on-premise in addition to the cloud. Unlike competitive approaches that cobble together point-products from multiple vendors, this approach gives IT unprecedented choice and control over where managed files reside, while users benefit with a secure, easy-to-use solution for file sync and sharing across all of their computers and devices.

The company said that today’s enterprise business users demand the ability to access, share and collaborate with all of their files from any location, on any device at any time, and have taken it upon themselves to use a variety of consumer-focused solutions and services that place valuable enterprise data at risk. These enterprise users typically store 20-30 GBs of business-related file data on their computers and devices, and often look to share files with individuals and groups inside and outside the corporate firewall. This can be particularly challenging when they need access to files using their own mobile devices or need to share with users who do not have existing accounts on their corporate network.

IT teams are charged with protecting company files and data, and some view today’s consumer-oriented approaches for online file sharing as unattractive options, and attempt to block them because some cloud infrastructures limit the ability to enforce policies related to security and administration. Many organizations must also comply with long-standing corporate governance and data sovereignty policies regarding storage and handling of files that make cloud-based storage solutions difficult to deploy at enterprise-scale.