Bitglass Splits Data Models for Box and Salesforce.com Across Clouds

Executive Insights for Building Trust in the Cloud

Rather than thinking in terms of discrete applications, in the era of the cloud a more logical approach may be to start thinking in terms of the sensitivity of particular sets of data.

Bitglass today announced the ability to split data between private clouds and both Box and Salesforce.com applications in the cloud in a move that essentially allows IT organizations to split the data model of those applications between different sources.

IT organizations can use Bitglass to store certain data sets in those applications in an encrypted format on a private cloud. For example, Bitglass CEO Nat Kausik says a company may want to store certain sensitive customer data locally, while still taking advantage of the cost and flexibility afforded by a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application.

Box and Salesforce.com are simply the first two cloud application instances where Bitglass has been able to leverage application programming interfaces (APIs) to gain access to the underlying object model that powers those environments. As time goes on, Kausik says the Bitglass technology could be applied to split data models across public and private clouds in any number of application instances.

For organizations that have security and governance issues with anything to do with public clouds of any type, Bitglass represents a major advance in how data will be potentially managed in the era of the cloud. Organizations, of course, will still have to figure out what classes of data will need to be stored where. But the good news is that cloud computing is no longer an all-or-nothing proposition.