Whether you’re a tech-literate product manager or not, few people would dispute that the booming popularity of BYOD (bring your own device) has improved workplace productivity and caused security headaches in equal measure. The core questions are: how do the guys at IT manage work-related output on multiple scattered devices without compromising personal privacy, and how do they keep sensitive work-related stuff confidential when it’s on a privately-owned device? Thanks to New York tech startup Divide (which used to go by the clunkier and slightly baffling name of Enterproid), device owners and IT teams have a neat solution: its app cyphers devices and securely segregates work-related and personal data.
Progressive popularity
The informed product manager may now be wondering why Divide deserves a fanfare while other tech firms have been offering solutions to this problem too. There’s VMware for starters, whose software also separates personal and work data and then there’s mobile device management firms Zenprise and Good Technology (which is heading for an IPO).
But there aren’t many who have proved as popular as the Divide app, which since its launch in 2010 has been downloaded on both iOS and Android platforms more than 200,000 times (and rising). Not only that, the more than 1,300 reviews it’s generated on Android give it an average rating of 4.1.
Big new cash injection
Last month, the startup (which also has offices in London and Hong Kong) raised a princely $12 million in Series B funding, courtesy of a round led by Google Ventures, with participation from existing investors Qualcomm Ventures and Comcast Ventures, plus new investors Harmony Partners and Globespan Capital Partners.
That brings Divide’s total investment to an impressive $25 million. Even the most skeptical product manger will agree that that suggests this product has got wings. And he’d be right: Divide has reported a ten-fold rise in paid licenses in 2013 alone.
With the Divide service, users can shift files between an on-site workplace environment and the cloud and can attach cloud-based and local alike documents to emails. It allows all files to be securely saved, viewed and shared, and it can share them between the Divide workspace and personal apps. And, by allowing permissions to be dealt with on a granular basis, it can be efficiently managed by those IT guys.
Neat, huh?