Thursday, May 14, 2009

Soonr is an example of a service doing more than just allowing access to the cloud and storing the data on it. Recently we went through a briefing with them and now are signed up for their service so expect this to be the first of several reports on how it works.

If you are a regular reader of this series, you can tell that I sit through A LOT of briefings; about 50% are interesting enough to write up, and about 1% really impress me. Soonr is in that 1%.

The first step is for Soonr to backup your documents directory or where ever it is that you store your active data. Soonr is the first to admit that their service is designed to capture changes to your documents, not to be a full system backup. This works well for us, I do a full system image about once per day to capture changes to applications, setting etc... but most of my work is stored in the Documents directory on my Mac. The Soonr backup agent does a continuous backup of your hard drive with version control.

Once the backup is made is where Soonr changes the game substantially. From a user stand point it allows you to share data with other Soonr users via projects, email or fax documents to others and do context level searching across your files.

In addition it allows you to share data via a link to non-Soonr users. For example one of the areas that Storage Switzerland will test drive is using Soonr to stream our video and white paper content. So in essence the entire Storage Switzerland community will be part of the test drive. Given the popularity of our latest Lab Report on Primary Storage Deduplication, we will be putting Soonr to the test.

If you are away from your desktop or laptop you can use the Soonr iPhone application to perform all these functions as well. Personally I can't tell you how often the need to email a presentation or link to a video comes up while I'm traveling, being able to knock it out right away while I am thinking of it is a major increase in productivity.

As I wrote in a recent article for Internet Evolution, security in the cloud is typically better than a user’s local security. While some scoffed at the idea, its true and Soonr is a good example. They have the basics covered like 128 bit SSL encryption, VeriSign, HackerSave, multi-level authentication, email and mobile number validation and auto logout.

Further you can control ownership and viewing of files. Files can be set to be shared for a certain duration and sharing can be removed at anytime, as well as de-authenticating lost devices or locking a user from deleting their information upon leaving the company.

The Soonr data centers themselves are SAS 70 compliant and have a completely redundant architecture with locations in the US and Europe. They have full anti-virus capabilities there as well.

Most important all polices are reviewed by third party security professionals.

The newest release of the service is targeted to more business users. As a result there is an administrator view to all of this functionality. The administrator can monitor use of the service, backup frequency, create teams, share folders of files, set provisioning totals and establish user rights. The interface has impressive functionality while at the same time keeping the use simple.

With this release Soonr has moved the entire cloud market forward and the winner is the users. From a personal/prosumer type of user to the small business, this service is amazingly compelling. Even in larger enterprises it is going to be very tempting. The rest of the cloud storage service offerings need to take notice of what Soonr is doing, or they may just be replaced.