CPA Ontario is the ambassador of the public accounting profession in the Canadian state of Ontario. The mandate of the organization is to protect the public interest by setting and enforcing the highest professional and ethical standards. It also strives to ensure that its members are identified as Canada’s premier leaders and advisors in the financial arena. For this to happen, CPA Ontario supports its members in their efforts to enhance their capabilities. In particular, the organization wanted to provide users with a cloud storage solution, but with an essential condition: the data was to stay on premises.

Satisfying the File Storage Needs of Thousands of Accountants

More than 80% of Ontario’s more than 85,000 CPAs work in positions in businesses of every size (as CEOs, CFOs, VPs Finance, etc.), in government, academia, or the not-for-profit sector. CPA Ontario also caters to over 25,000 students working outside public accounting in a variety of roles in all sectors of the Canadian economy. For a cloud storage solution to appeal to all of these different accounting actors, “We wanted something that was easy to use and safe and secure at the same time,” explains Fabian Baijnauth. Naturally, price was also a factor. After all, accountants are trained to look for cost-efficiency, value for money and return on investment.

CHALLENGE:

Narrowing the Search to Find the Right Technology Supplier

CPA Ontario also had other criteria in mind. Security had to include interworking with common security programs, encryption methods, and firewalls, together with the possibility to verify requests for file transfers. Connection and transfer abilities had to include the possibility to work with accepted code (ASCII and binary) as well as connection consistency, proxies and protocols. The technology had to run completely within the CPA Ontario infrastructure, for total control over data, yet integrate effortlessly with existing network permissions and directories, in order to make existing network folder shares accessible from anywhere.

SOLUTION:

FileCloud’s Secure File Sharing and Sync is the Answer to CPA Ontario’s Needs

“Using FileCloud we can ensure all data stays on our server at the same time as providing our users the luxury of a cloud storage solution,” says Fabian Baijnauth. The synchronization capabilities and intuitive user interface of FileCloud have allowed CPA Ontario to roll out its own Dropbox-style solution, with all the user-friendliness and extra data protection and security. (Compare Dropbox vs FileCloud and learn why FileCloud is the leader among alternatives to Dropbox ). Content can be synchronized over computers, smartphones, and tablets, with secure backup and restore of files across all platforms and devices too.

As accountants, like their counterparts in so many other professions, go mobile, FileCloud is there for CPA Ontario to provide seamless access for its users from iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows devices.

FileCloud has brought CPA Ontario the self-hosted, on-premise Enterprise File Sharing and Sync (EFSS) solution that it was looking for.