Can an enterprise content management system promise to delight end-users and keep the company CEO out of jail at the same time?

It seems like a ridiculous question to ask until you consider therequirements for information governance and compliance that manycompanies have to adhere to. Once you take all of thatin, you’re morelikely to walk away with a headache than an answer.

For well over a decade, users of document management systems in regulated environments have been complaining that technology gets in their way while they try to do their jobs.

Those days will soon be over (at least for Documentum users), according to Rick Devenuti, President of EMC’s Information Intelligence Group (IIG). “The barrier between productivity and control must go away,” he declared duringhis keynote address at EMC World 2012 which is taking place in Las Vegas this week.

And, then, rather than give a belabored explanation about how his team recognized the end users’ frustration and pain, Devenutiintroduced a solution that his customers could start using immediately. “We have acquired Syncplicity,” he said, and then promptly invited the audience to try it out for 90 days.

Learning Opportunities

Liberated Data, Liberated End User

For those who aren’t familiar with Syncplicity, it’s a SaaS solution that provides centralized file management, automated backup, synchronization, sharing and collaboration for business users with all of the security and governance that IT requires. From an end-users perspective, it allows knowledge workers to access files from any device, as well as web applications, no matter where the files were first saved.

If you’re thinking “kind of like Box”, you’re not alone; we called on Syncplicity co-founder and CTO Ondrej Hrebicek to explain the differences.

Web 2.0 Bettered

Box has a web 2.0 interface, he explained. “You have to check-in, checkout, drag and drop and so on,” he said. Syncplicity, on the other hand, is a cloud based data management platform, all of your files are consolidated in one place on the cloud. “There’s single sign-on, instantaneous sync, security, remote wipe, end to end encryption, a policy engine, and so on…Users get all of those features without having to think about any of them at all.”

Can you say frictionless?