Asana announces new products and EU data centre

27 Feb 2020

Asana co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Image: Asana

With a new data centre in Frankfurt, Asana’s enterprise customers will be able to choose where their data is stored.

Today (27 February), work management platform Asana announced that is opening a new data centre in Frankfurt, which will give Asana’s enterprise customers more control over where their data is stored.

With the new data centre, these customers will be able to comply with their own internal policies and external data residency requirements, by choosing whether their data is stored inside or outside of the EU.

Sharing the details with Siliconrepublic.com, Asana said: “As we continue expanding our global footprint and supporting a wider variety of teams and industries around the world, we want to ensure customers have more control over where their data is stored.

“That’s why we’re pleased to announce the launch of a new data centre in Frankfurt, Germany, available today to enterprise customers.”

A data backup in Ireland

Asana explained that user data is not currently stored in Ireland, “however data backups take place in both Ireland and in the US. The backups for domains in the EU data centre take place in Ireland.”

The company, which has a presence in Dublin, recently moved into a new city centre office on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay.

Any enterprise customers using Asana will now be able to move their data, but the entire organisation’s data must be hosted in one geographic region. Asana follows the likes of workplace communication tool Slack in offering users more control over where their data is stored. Slack also chose Frankfurt as the site of its EU data centre.

When asked what customer data could be stored in the EU data centre, Asana said: “Profile data such as avatar images, name, and password will continue to be stored in the US. All customer data like tasks, attachments, projects and portfolios will be stored in the EU data centre.”

Asana co-founder Dustin Moskovitz said: “As the work management imperative becomes increasingly global, we’re focused on supporting our expanding international team and customer base to meet the growing demand to democratise project management and improve team coordination.

“We’re more focused than ever on our vision to enable organisations to align their missions with clarity of plan, purpose and responsibility so they can focus on the work that matters most.”

Enterprise customer Linus Sternberg, head of data management at German beverage industry business Team Beverage AG, added: “Data security and compliance are of the greatest importance to our team.

“We’re thrilled that Asana has launched this new data centre to give us greater flexibility and control over our data.”

New products announced

In addition to the news related to Asana’s data centre, the company also announced today that it plans to launch Asana for Operations and Asana for Sales and Account Management, which are two new end-to-end solutions for teams to manage operations and sales workflows.

The company referenced a recent survey from the Anatomy of Work Index, in which 83pc of respondents said that their work teams are not as efficient as they could be, due to not having the right processes in place.

Alex Hood, head of product at Asana, said: “Today’s operations and sales teams are spending more time on ‘work about work’ than on the work that actually drives their business forward.

“Without clear or consistent processes in place, teams end up manually coordinating their work and wading through repetitive requests, duplicated data entry and a complete lack of clarity on who is doing what by when. The result is lost deals, missed deadlines and delayed deployments.

“Asana for Operations and Asana for Sales and Account Management cut through the chaos of coordination as the single source of truth for managing an organisation’s most critical workflows – resulting in happier, more productive teams.”

Recent recognition in Ireland

Asana’s Dublin presence was recently recognised in the Great Place to Work survey, ranking in seventh place in the category of best small workplace in Ireland 2020.

Commenting on the news, Anna Binder, head of people operations at Asana, said: “Being recognised as one of the best workplaces in Ireland is an exciting step as we continue growing our team and customers throughout Europe.

“We believe that the investment we make in our culture is what fuels our business success, from North America, to Europe, to Asia Pacific and beyond. We’re honoured to be recognised as a best workplace in Ireland and are proud to be part of the country’s vibrant, innovative business community.”

Cathal Divilly, partner at Great Place to Work Ireland, said: “This year’s survey findings show that employees in workplaces like Asana feel greater levels of organisational pride than ever before, which is being supported by internal CSR initiatives that emphasise employee ownership and decision-making.

“Overall, companies like Asana are marking themselves out by providing a distinctive sense of meaning in both personal and organisational roles for their staff.”

Other companies that were recognised in the small businesses category this year included Esri Ireland, Adecco, Osborne, Fivetran, Cadence, Mars Ireland, Wolfgang Digital, PEI and Exterion Media.

Update, 2.30pm, 27 February 2020: This article was updated to clarify that Asana’s enterprise customers can make use of the new data centre.

Kelly Earley was a journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com