Simply put, small businesses need safe, secure, convenient, turn-key solutions for managing data. Small business owners and managers wear many hats, with very little bandwidth to deal with catastrophic data loss or performance and connectivity issues. In today’s connected world, they need cloud remote-access without sacrificing security.
This is why I am thrilled with yesterday’s NAS storage announcement. This portfolio of NAS products was created with the home office and small network in mind, and it’s bundled with features that make small business easier.
1. NAS OS4
This might be my favorite feature (please don’t tell our hardware guys that). This software was built in-house to work effortlessly with Seagate NAS products. There’s no worrying about hardware/software compatibility issues; a headache that often requires costly IT support.
NAS OS4 has a beautiful web-based interface that’s business-focused, and a level of simplicity that cuts out all of the extra “noise.” For an added level of security, there are multiple backup capabilities pre-installed to support backup through a cloud service like Box or offsite using NAS-to-NAS. Additionally, SimplyRAID balances performance with data protection, and power management cuts energy costs.
OS4 also comes equipped with an app manager and Seagate Sdrive remote access, but these both deserve paragraphs of their own.
2. Remote Cloud Access with Sdrive
For those of you familiar with popular cloud services like Google Drive or DropBox, this will feel similar. The difference is that this is your own private cloud. With Sdrive, you can easily access files stored on your NAS storage from any location, on any device. Public cloud options are great for customer-facing documents, but when it comes to internal files the security of private network are a must. Sdrive combines the ease of the cloud with the security of your private network.
3. App Manager & Streaming
Remember the iPhone 3g commercial in 2009? “There’s An App For That.” Five years later, that catch-line is more relevant than ever. The NAS and NAS Pro solutions are enhanced with a range of third-party apps that make doing business easier, including Seagate Antivirus, Surveillance Manager and WordPress.
Media can also be streamed to Smart TVs, Blu-ray players, etc. Music can be streamed as a shared iTunes library to PCs or Macs on the home office or small business network.
4. Seagate NAS HDD
This shouldn’t really surprise anyone, but these new Seagate NAS boxes come equipped with Seagate NAS hard drives on the inside. Some small business owners may not realize that many NAS boxes do not come equipped with drives from the same manufacturer. To fit in with the all-in-one theme of the Seagate box and Seagate software, these products are also equipped with Seagate NAS HDDs which were specifically built for NAS applications. These are much more reliable than standard desktop drives.
5. Centralized
With a range of capacity from 2TB to 30TB, you won’t be running out of storage space anytime soon. This gives you the ability to centralize all of your files, which has the obvious benefits of control and scale. Couple this with remote access and suddenly you have improved employee collaboration and, ultimately, productivity.
6. Performance
Slow file transfer; it’s the all-to-common home and small office network issue that no one has time for. With a Marvel ARM 1.2GHz processor you will experience excellent file transfer performance that can support up to 25 or 50 users (NAS and NAS Pro, respectively), without the necessity for constant monitoring and performance upgrades from experienced IT Professionals.
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