How Egnyte Landed Yamaha

One of our highest-profile clients is Yamaha Corporation of America, the North American subsidiary of Yamaha. When Vimal Thomas, YCA's Vice President of IT, set out to find an EFSS solution, he had a very specific list of demands.The chief catalyst for YCA's search for an EFSS solution was a mandate to move to the cloud. YCA selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host the majority of its data, and needed a content collaboration application that was compatible with AWS and was enterprise-grade.Before finding a solution with Egnyte, YCA was leveraging a combination of physical hard drives and Dropbox's team features. Video files would be saved on physical hard drives handed or shipped from one user to another. Other content like contracts and working documents would be stored on Dropbox, despite its limitations for enterprise-grade file sharing.Thomas needed a solution that worked with AWS. He wanted to put a stop to users' practice of storing content on external drives, then physically shipping or carrying them around. And ultimately he was looking for a way to help users collaborate easily and securely with partners and customers while enabling IT to enforce its security recommendations for specific files.Egnyte Connect was the answer, thanks to a few key features that addressed each of his concerns.

1. Platform-Agnostic, Adaptive ArchitectureThe choice to move to the cloud was an obvious one for YCA: there was no version synchronization between the corporate offices, Yamaha Artist Services, or the Canadian branch.“People would come to me and say ‘we need a solution to be able to back up and recover our data quickly,’” says Thomas. His users were crying out for the agility and seamless access of the cloud. Choosing AWS to host the majority of YCA’s data was a forward-looking idea, but, Thomas feared, one that would require an overhaul of his infrastructure.“We used to have Windows file servers with direct attached storage,” says Thomas. As he began to migrate his data, Thomas realized “there was no like-for-like replacement in AWS, and Egnyte Connect was the best enterprise-grade solution that fit [YCA’s] needs and worked with AWS.”YCA leverages AWS for storage with Egnyte Connect as a front-end collaboration application. Synchronization is now a non-issue because Egnyte Connect keeps track of all changes and makes sure everyone has access to all versions no matter where the file is stored.
2. Mobility SuiteBy leveraging Egnyte Connect's cloud deployment, YCA is now able to collaborate seamlessly with partners and customers. As YCA has stored more and more data on Egnyte, the mobility suite has ensured that no one will ever have to ship a hard drive again.With the Egnyte Connect mobility suite, collaboration isn't dictated by location or device, and YCA has embraced it to the fullest. Thomas raves "I've had people tell me they've been able to make edits on their phone, on the way to the airport."The rich features offered with link sharing, like setting expiration dates and choosing which version of a file a link points to, allow content to be shared on precisely the right terms, quickly and securely.
3. Precise Permission ControlsYCA’s previous solution for collaboration on non-video content was to use the team features of Dropbox. However, without the ability to set permissions at the folder level and precisely calibrate permissions at a subfolder level, IT policy was toothless. We’ve written at length about just why it’s important to have granular, subfolder permissions control for admins. As YCA began moving files from disparate hard drives to a centralized AWS cloud repository, it was more important than ever that administrators and power users could control who sees what. Subfolder permissions have another benefit that’s critical for YCA and any music company: protecting intellectual property. With 50 years of artist content sitting on portable drives, it was impossible to restrict who had access, or even control where the hard drives physically resided. By using subfolder permissions, it was simple to only allow access to users who needed it, and at the same time, ensure that irreplaceable content was safe and secure for generations to come.

It's no surprise that, while YCA has had a learning curve with Egnyte Connect, there has not been an adoption curve: just the opposite in fact. Since having its content collaboration brought up to date, YCA hasn't looked back.To read more and download the full case study, visit the case study page.