Most IT organizations have minimal visibility into what’s on an employee’s phone and how it’s being used, and even less control or insight into information being accessed and shared.

MobileIron and Accellion announced a partnership today to provide our customers with secure mobile device and content management. Together, MobileIron and Accellion help an IT organization to regain control over mobile devices and how employees collaborate and share information from them.

As part of the partnership, Accellion will be one of only seven applications chosen to participate in MobileIron’s AppConnect program.  The goal of AppConnect is to secure MobileIron-developed apps as well as third-party apps on the App Store, Android Market and other mobile app services.

The benefit of the Accellion and MobileIron partnership was summed up by Jason Otani, Director, IT Infrastructure, Curtiss-Wright Corporation, a mutual customer:

Using Accellion Secure Collaboration’s native mobile apps, our teams really appreciate being able to securely collaborate on contracts and engineering plans with internal and external business partners.  MobileIron’s ability to wipe the device clean remotely any time a device is lost or stolen adds another level of security protection against a possible data breach.

For the most up-to-date news and information about this partnership, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

When you think of Barney, Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine, enterprise software isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind, but today Accellion announced that the company behind these widely cherished children’s entertainment brands, HIT Entertainment, has implemented a virtual, enterprise-wide deployment of Accellion Secure File Transfer.

HIT Entertainment Protects their Brands with Accellion

The press release goes on to detail:

“HIT Entertainment is responsible for well-known programmes such as Bob the Builder, Thomas & Friends and Fireman Sam, and has a pressing need to protect its intellectual property when sending so many files to its offices across the world,” said James Herbert, HIT Entertainment’s Senior Manager of Global Infrastructure.

Accellion originally replaced FTP as the main method for file transfer at HIT Entertainment, a way of working that was cumbersome, not secure and led to an additional management overhead. After three years, the company was ready to commit for a longer period with Accellion. “The product is easy to run,” said Herbert, “it virtually manages itself.”

Well known brands need to protect their intellectual property in a way that’s easy-to-use for employees and easy-to-manage for IT staff.  Accellion solutions can help.

I read an interesting blog post recently entitled “Three Ways to Market Nostalgia in Social Communities.” As someone who has enjoyed more than a few good moments of nostalgia I thought maybe this topic would provide fertile ground for discussion.  Apparently products from the past are in vogue, such as retro versions of Pepsi and Coke, but does this have any relevance to IT?

While I can understand someone enjoying the nostalgic connection with Frosted Flakes’ Tony the Tiger saying “They’re Gr-r-reat!” is there anyone out there yearning for the days of 20,000 vacuum tubes and the Eniac Computer or the FORTRAN computer language or the Pong computer game – okay on the last one I admit a small tinge of nostalgia.  Is there anything we miss about the past in IT? Computer Cards, Room-size computers, the floppy disk?

And by inference does this mean that everything new in IT is good?  One of the challenges with IT is the pace of progress.  Products and technologies are being rapidly superceded so where does that leave the IT staff and the vendors who are trying to keep pace?

At Accellion we have experienced first hand the widespread adoption of virtual and cloud environments and the rapidly changing landscape for IT deployments.  Since we introduced the industry’s first virtual appliance for secure file transfer back in November 2007, now more than 80% of Accellion secure file transfer deployments are into virtual environments.  Originally we supported just VMware, and have since added support for Citrix XenServer and also most recently Microsoft Hyper-V.  And we see the same steep adoption curve happening this year with cloud deployments.

Today, deployment of Accellion secure file transfer can take just minutes and that’s a good thing for everyone. Some of our earliest customers from 2005 and 2006 are now replacing their original Accellion physical appliances with virtual and/or cloud deployments – it’s great to see them enjoying a whole new flavor of Accellion.

Are we nostalgic for the time when we were on first name terms with the FedEX guy, shipping large volumes of physical servers out to our customers – no way.

Now going into its 3rd prime time season, Virtualization is definitely a hit show for the IT crowd. The numbers from the recent CDW survey of 400 IT managers show its widespread following. More than 90% of respondents indicated they are implementing virtualization at some level, with 73% saying they started their virtualization efforts in 2007, 2008. Baseline provides a handy slideshow of the main results from the CDW Server Virtualization Survey.

Our experience with virtualization started in November 2007, with the introduction of the Accellion Managed File Transfer virtual appliance.  It was the first time a virtual appliance for secure file transfer had been offered.  Prior to this, 100% of Accellion Managed File Transfer sales were of physical appliances.  Today, more than 75% of new customers request our virtual appliance. Which is great news for them and for us.  We see the benefits of virtualization with every install.  No dedicated hardware to setup, access to top of the line computing resources and quick and easy software installation – the software is delivered via Accellion secure file transfer. Installation was always easy with Accellion but now it’s stupid easy, to quote one of our customers.

If you are interested in reading more about what IT managers think about the Accellion virtual appliance – check out the reviews on the VMware marketplace.

At Accellion, we’re hooked on virtualization. We’ve signed up for next season – we hear they’re calling it Virtualization and the Cloud – the New Reality.

Interesting article this week in InfoWorld about 2010 CIO priorities. Nope, it wasn’t surprising to read that Virtualization and Cloud Computing top Gartner’s 2010 top ten CIO priorities.  But the article did provide a good read on the role Virtualization and Cloud Computing are playing in re-shaping IT.

At Accellion we see the “seeds being sown for a different kind of IT”. Over the past 12 – 18 months we’ve seen the significant and rapid shift in demand for managed file transfer deployments for Virtual and Cloud environments.  Yes, virtual and cloud deployments are  faster to deploy and scale, and lower cost. And yes it is interesting to read that CIOs and CFOs are getting excited in this shift to scalable technologies that get away from monster IT projects with huge upfront investments and long deployment timeframes.

We like this new kind of IT that allows organizations to quickly get  business solutions into the hands of business users.  With security and compliance regulations placing increasing demands on organizations it’s good to know that at least IT is making it easier and faster to deploy solutions.

Virtualization and Cloud Computing – bring it on.

It’s been a while since my last post, things have got VERY busy at Accellion.

I guess the world is realizing that files aren’t getting any smaller.

Anyway just in case you missed the recent announcement regarding Accellion’s new virtual appliance here’s the link to the news Accellion Introduces Virtual Appliance.

Also had a nice product review of Accellion in Infoworld Accellion Product Review in InfoWorld