Egnyte, a company that focuses on enterprise file sharing, providing an intelligent layer between cloud solutions and on-premises storage, updated its mobile apps today, adding the Apple Watch to its stack.
The company’s mobile refresh includes its Android, iOS and Windows apps.
I kicked it with Rajesh Ram, the company’s co-founder, to dig into Egnyte’s mobile strategy and why an enterprise file storage company would support the Apple Watch. His notes were terse: Apple creates product categories, and so building for the Apple Watch is an appropriate, forward-looking step. Egnyte is hardly the only company building for Apple’s wearable, of course.
The company’s new apps include what the firm calls “dynamic notifications,” and the ability for administrators to onboard users while mobile. The firm’s Watch app includes offline folder management and, of course, notifications.
Windows?
Interesting to Egnyte’s app refresh is the changing usage data that the firm is seeing in the world of Windows. The company’s Colin Jordan shared the following data with TechCrunch, involving its beta Windows Phone app over the past half year:
- At the company level there has been nearly 500% (4.8x) increase in the amount of organizations with Windows Mobile users
- At the user level there has been slightly over 400% (4.2x) increase in the total # of users utilizing the Windows Mobile app
- From an action standpoint we have seen 350% (3.5x) increase in the total # of actions taking place on the Windows Mobile app
The data is interesting as it highlights the fact that Microsoft’s mobile strategy appears to have, and I say this with an ocean of salt, sprouted green shoots.
Five hundred percent, of course, from a small base is still a small number, but the above-listed growth metrics are certainly far and away larger than Egnyte’s aggregate growth during the same period, implying that Microsoft is actually accreting market share. Ahead of Windows 10, Microsoft might have a small bit of backwind.
Egnyte
I’ve tracked Egnyte for some time now, mostly from a financial perspective. The company’s CEO, Vineet Jain recently came to TechCrunch for an interview, during which he said that his firm has plans to go public. As I wrote at the time:
Typically, Jain was candid: No IPO in the next 12 months, but yes to the idea inside of 18 months. That means Egnyte should go public before next summer or, perhaps, roughly a year after Box jumped into the pool.
The company’s mobile updates are a plank in that direction. What will be interesting is whether the company keeps its growth curve up and hits that IPO window, or a larger company scoops the firm up to bolster their enterprise offerings.
What’s fun is that given the close ties between Egnyte and Google, its investor, any acquisition of the firm by a non-Google entity would come with rich competitive irony.