Posted on

How to password protect public cloud files for almost any public Cloud Storage

For over 2 years now we have had the Public Files page. When users sets a file public from any of the 35+ information Clouds they have mapped to their account then it is displayed on this public files page.  Users have always been able to make such files password protected by encrypting the files on upload through our platform, but we have had feedback that what users really wanted was the ability to have any files on this page password protected, whether they were uploaded as encrypted files or not.

We’ve now added this change to the service. To take advantage of it all that needs to be done is to assign a password to the public files page from your Cloud DashBoard after login to the web. This can be set under the “extended options” section (at the bottom of the DashBoard).

Password protect public files

Setting files to be public is easy, just right click on the file from the web and choose to make the file public:

Other desktop and mobile clients also enable files to be set as public, as in the Android example below:

Once files are set public they appear on the public files page that each user account has:

These files are also available as an RSS feed that can added to the foot of an email for example, or as a an iPhone App:

Once a file is then accessed when public file sharing is turned on then the user is redirected to a password page  when they try to access any file from the public files page:

This feature works across files from any Cloud and indeed Cloud Files from different clouds can be shared and protected from the same page in this way.

Business Cloud File Server users can take advantage of this or turn off file sharing completely for their users.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Posted on

Cloud File Manager for Windows Phone updated: Unify access to your Cloud Files

We recently updated The Windows Phone Cloud File Manager. Features include:

– Instant access to unified Cloud files anytime, anywhere direct from a WP7 device.

– Assign lengthy tasks and operations to the SME Platform Tasks Engine (PTE). Use your phone while tasks are completed in background. Check progress at anytime in cloud tasks.

– Manage multiple Clouds in a single view. Easily move files between different clouds, done in background.

– Advanced Cloud Search feature that can search for files across multiple clouds.

– Unique Cloud Clipboard feature enables file management from different clouds in batches, without downloading & then uploading.

– Unique Direct Upload uploads files from web directly, no need to download and then upload, just enter file address and our servers will upload it in background.

– Open files in the phone in Microsoft Office, MediaPlayer etc.

– Share and collaborate – share files to social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Windows Live, etc.), over email or with users groups.

– Record audio (even with screen locked), take notes and 2-way sync with chosen Cloud(s). No need for another recording App.

– 2-way sync pictures with different Clouds. Integrated with Pictures hub. Pictures can be uploaded (shared) directly from the hub.

We have seen a recent surge in business customers wanting to use the Windows Phone with our Cloud File Server SaaS and hosted hybrid appliance and expect this to continue with the recently announced windows phone business features.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Posted on

Integrating iAnnotate with Google Drive, Amazon S3, OpenStack, and other Cloud Storage solutions

The latest version of iAnnotate PDF, the iPad App that enables editing of PDF Documents, adds support for WebDav which means that you can use the SME ClouDav Protocol Adaptor, free with the iOS SME iOS App, to connect iAnnotate to many Clouds that it does not natively support. SMES supports integration with more Storage and SaaS Clouds than any other service.

The steps to enable access to the Clouds mapped to your SME Account are simple:

20120302-232948.jpg

20120302-233028.jpg

20120302-233055.jpg

20120302-233130.jpg

CloudDav is enabled with all Business Cloud File Server Accounts and also available in the on-premise enterprise version of the Storage Made Easy EFSS solution.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Posted on

Google Docs WebDav update

We made some changes to accommodate some issues with Google Docs with our CloudDav protocol Adaptor:

1. The first change relates to creating documents directly in Google Docs and then trying to open the files directly in Pages iWork (for example). Previously this failed as the file had a zero size, as the size is unknown until Google exports it. We fixed this. Now such files created directly in Google Docs will open correctly.

2. The second change related to saving files directly back to Google Docs when creating them in Pages (or other Keynote, Numbers). These would fail because pages tried to place a zero size file lock to test write access. Other Clouds allow this but Google Docs does not, and therefore Pages would report that the file could not be saved. This is also now resolved.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Posted on

Cloud Computing Use Case: Editing Google Docs, Office365 and DropBox files in iWork on the iPad

We recently did a roll out of our Cloud File Server service to a company of just under 150 people. The primary driver of this was federating data sources, governance and auditing of data, and the ability to edit files directly on iWork on the iPad.

For this use case we’ll concentrate on the latter, enabling ubiquitous document editing on the iPad using the Apple iWork product which encompasses Pages, Keynote and Numbers.

The company is a technology company in which different parts of the businesses use different Cloud Services. The core business admin and management uses Office365. Google Docs is used by the sales team, primarily as a way to share Google Docs files easily with their customers and prospects, whom they found to be predominately Google Docs users. DropBox is used by the tech team who like the ability to have replicated to all their code, tech papers etc instantly to any device.

Interestingly, whereas you would think this disparate use of similar Cloud storage services is an edge case, we find it is not. The storage vendor names may change, but the disparate number, of what appear to be, similar services remains.

When questioned about why they don’t use the other in-house services each team had a different USP as to why:

Tech Team: “With DropBox I don’t have to remember to bring my files. They are always with me”

Admin / Management: “Office365 works and Syncs with what I use like my Outlook task list and calendar”

Sales Team: “most of our customers use Google Apps, so sharing files with the Google Group we have setup for Sales is the best way to get new deals / propositions to them”

One thing this company has jointly bought into was iPad’s. They all used them and their preference was to use Apple iWork as their document editor as they liked it’s simplicity, ease of use, and WYSIWYG features. The problem was it did not work with any of their Cloud products.as it only supported iCloud, MobileMe and WebDav.

The company in question had already bought into the SME Cloud File Server. It enabled them to audit files above all the clouds they used and provide Organisation Shared folders that worked above a “set” of Clouds, giving them a single view on disparate resources.

As the SME Cloud File Server also supports a WebDav protocol adaptor above any Cloud, something we call CloudDav, then it became very easy for all the teams to create, load, edit, and save documents to either Google Docs, Office365, or DropBox.

The steps to achieve this were simple:

1. Launch Pages, Numbers or Keynote

2. Click the ‘+’ button and choose ‘Copy from Webdav’ (assume a doc is to be loaded)

3. Enter https://Webdav.storagemadeeasy.com as the server address and your smestorage username and password as authentication. This will then load the file tree and the clouds available to the account.

4. Tap on a document to load it and start editing

5. When finished just choose the “Copy to WebDAV” button and it will be saved.

In this way documents in Clouds not supported by iWork can be edited and saved.

 

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Posted on

PogoPlug Provider updated

We’ve enhanced the PogoPlug cloud provider so that as well as supporting PogoPlug appliances, we support also the newly announced PogoPlug Cloud. This means that you can use SMEStorage desktop and mobile access clients to manage your PogoPlug Cloud(s) and also business users can use PogoPlug as the data store for a Cloud File Server, and users who want ubiquitous access to PogoPlug from FTP and WebDav can use our CloudDav and CloudFTP protocol adaptors.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Posted on

Turning any Storage Cloud into an Amazon S3 compatible Private, Public or hybrid Cloud

In the past we have written about Amazon S3 and how, aas the 100 pound gorilla, of the Cloud Storage world, it’s S3 API has become almost a de facto interface for developers. This is one of the reasons that we originally added an S3 API protocol adaptor to our service.

Many start up’s, small businesses and even enterprises choose initially to use S3 for storage.  This can be fine initially, however, when the volume increases the monthly bill can become an OPEX issue and small companies (and Enterprise) are looking for ways to slash their costs in any way they can. Aside from this other companies have stringent issues about where data is stored (for clarification, Amazon S3 is PCI DSS 2.0 compliant,   SAS 70 Type II certified, and VPV ISO 27001 certified) or wish to store it within their own data centre or site.

As SMEStorage supports over 35 Clouds and SaaS services, you could very easily turn Google Docs, Box, Windows Azure or DropBox into an S3 Platform, or you could just add your own NetGear or PogoPlug appliance, or other private storage implementation.

The SME hosted service, and Cloud Appliance,  provides the ability access to any Saas or cloud storage mapped to your account via multiple protocols. These include  FTP, WebDav and also S3. These work even if the backend provider does not support the protocol natively. The SME protocol adaptors will do the protocol translation to the native storage provider protocol. One of the benefits of this that the users don’t need any special software to be able to access the Clouds. They can use any FTP, or WebDav client, or in the case of S3 any S3 client or code in which the host endpoint can be changed.

To demonstrate compatibility with the S3 API and tools we will now look at how to use AWS s3curl with a smestorage account.

To use s3 curl you will need to modify s3curl.pl and change the end point to

‘s3.smetorage.com’ (US Server) or ‘s3eu.storagemadeeasy.com‘ (EU Server) e.g my @endpoints = ( ‘s3.storagemadeeasy.com‘);

Your id is your smestorage account user name and you can obtain your secret key by logging into SMEStorage.com going to “My  Dashboard” (from the sidebar) and copying the API key from  the“Tech Info”  section where the “API secret Key” resides.

Now you are all set to use s3curl. For example to list all the buckets you can use

./s3curl.pl –id smestorageusername –key API secret key http://s3.storagemadeeasy.com

For s3curl command line options please see the README file that is part of the s3curl package. Also note that the secure way to use s3curl is to use the .s3curl file in your home directory to pass the id and and key.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Posted on

FTPS Support added to CloudFTP (FTP over any Cloud)

As per the numerous requests we have had, we have now updated our CloudFTP product to also work with FTPS. This update enables all existing users and any new users to take access of secure Cloud FTP into Clouds that are mapped to their account that do not natively support FTP, such as for example, Amazon S3, Google Docs, Google Sites, DropBox etc.

The ports that you require are:

FTPES – port 21

FTPIS(FTPS) -990

and the host is storagemadeeasy.com

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Posted on

You don’t need to Jailbreak to have the full files experience on your iPad / iPhone

I was talking to a friend recently and he was bemoaning the fact that he had upgraded his iPad 2 and therefore lost his jailbreak Apps, and in particular the iFile application which he felt made the iPad into more of a a laptop replacement. Without this he felt that as well as his iPad he also needed his laptop on trips “just in case”.

This got me thinking and I asked him what it was he needed to do. His answer was:

“I need to be able to save files from my email locally, and then be able to send files I’ve saved on my device as an attachment, and I also need to be able to download any file type from the web browser and email if I need to. I also need  access to my internal office files over WebDav, my own personal DropBox files, and also files stored from our supplier which are hosted on a Amazon S3 Account they give us. With the Amazon S3 files I need to download then locally as I need to be able to share them with our customers as they are product information sheets, and I cannot just set them public in Amazon S3 as I don’t want to make these files available to everyone.

Additional to all of this I also want to be able to work with my Local files ie create directories, and even cut and paste files so that I can organise them, just like I would do on my laptop.”

I stepped through with him how he could do all of this with our Storage Made Easy iOS client and he was amazed. He did not know he could do some of these things without jailbreaking his iPad. Given the value he got from our chat he cajoled me into putting together this blog post outlining what I went through with him to share any value other readers / users would get from it.

Lets take the things he mentioned one by one:

1. Requirement: I need to be able to save files from email and web browser locally – You can save any attachment from your email into SME, even if the iPad does not recognise the file. The SME App lets you save any file type from email or Safari. Once it is saved you can choose to view it within SME, or send it as an attachment using the iOS email client. You can also choose to open the file into another iOS App and work with/on the file from there.

2. Requirement: I need to access my internal office files that I can share using WebDav and also my DropBox files – The SME App fully support access to local files over the WebDav protocol directly from the iPad and also works with DropBox. Both sets of files are presented in a unified file system so that they can easily be managed and you can even copy and paste files between the two.

3. Requirement: I need to be able to work with my Amazon S3 files and be able to download and share them over email with my supplier: As with DropBox and WebDav The SME App supports Amazon S3 and enables files to be managed or moved between clouds, as well as being download locally. However SME also enables you to share Amazon S3 files without making the files public on Amazon S3. You can even set a link expiry so that the file links that are shared eventually expire.

The SME App does not just work with WebDav, Amazon S3, and DropBox it now works with over 50 Storage Clouds.

4. Requirement: I also want to be able to work with my Local files ie create directories, and even cut and paste files so that I can organise them, just like I would do on my laptop – You can do exactly this in SME local files view. You can move files about using cut and paste and you can also create directories to help organise your files.

This touches only part of what can be done with the Storage Made EasyCloud and Local File Manager. Please see the slideshow below to see more:

 

iSMEStorage for iPad: Cloud File Manager

View more presentations from SMEStorage
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather
Posted on

Turning a NetGear ReadyNas into a Cloud File Server with WebDav and SME

NetGear ReadyNAS is a fully featured NAS appliance for individuals and small businesses (SMB’s).

The ReadyNAS is a great way to store locally accessible content but it would be even better if you could get to that content when out of the office and on the road. Even better what if you could organise that content, assign which users can access which files remotely, set file access permissions, and more, in essence turning your ReadyNas into a private Cloud File Server.

Thankfully, the ReadyNAS supports WebDAV, or “Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning”, which is an an extension to HTTP that allows access to files remotely over HTTP or HTTPS. This enables you to map your ReadyNAS as a Private Cloud to SME This is a true Private Cloud in that your files do not need to be moved or synchronised anywhere else for this to work.

First you need to setup the ReadyNAS for WebDav. You can find a detailed guide on how to do that here.


Once this is done we can begin to add the The WebDav enabled ReadyNAS as a Mapped Private Cloud to SME.

To do this the first thing to do is setup an Account at StorageMadeEasy.com. We will be stepping through the setup of a Cloud File Server Account, but this will also work for free or personal accounts.

After creating an account (in this example a Cloud File Server Account) let’s first configure the WebDav connector to work with the ReadyNAS.

To do this navigate to ‘My DashBoard’ from the sidebar and choose to add a new WebDav Provider.


Choosing ‘Add Provider’ will take you to a screen where you can add the ReadyNAS WebDav provider details.


For the WebDav Server host enter the “IP Address (or DDNS name)/sharename” that you setup when getting your ReadyNAS for WebDav. For username and password use the same name and password that you use for accessing a share on your PC. Change the port to 443 as SSL is enabled. Enter the ReadyNAS share path that you previously entered.

Once done click ‘continue, and you will be prompted to sync the ReadyNAS file meta data from the share that you just created.

Once this is done your ReadyNAS device is available to be used as a CloudFile Server.


If you navigate to the file manager you will see the ReadyNAS files/folders from the share you created on the ReadyNAS:


As well as the ReadyNAS files we can also add other Cloud Files, from any of over 25 Cloud Storage Providers. In this case I’ll add Google Docs using the exactly same procedure as adding the WebDav provider we outlined earlier except this time I’ll choose the Google Docs Provider and step through that wizard. Once Added I’ll be able to add both sets of files in a virtual file tree:


This is now setup to be able to access files using iPhone / iPad, Android, Windows Mobile 7, BlackBerry or any of the Mac,Windows, and Linux desktop drives that SME Supports:


Now we’re ready to create some users. We can do this from our Web Dashboard:


Users login become <username>@<Cloud File Server name>. In this example we used marketing@ReadyNAS.

Once the users are setup we can add some shared Organisation Folders from the File Manager and then set some access permissions against them. These folders can be a mixture of folders that reside on the ReadyNAS or Google Docs, or indeed any other Cloud you have added.


The Cloud Admin can also enable users to be able to setup their own private Clouds with data only they have access to, for example Google Docs Apps accounts that are allocated to each user, or SkyDrive Accounts etc:


There are a myriad of file sharing options which include file links, file links with managed expiry, sharing with collaboration groups, making files public (and if required protecting them with passwords even if public). All these options are also available from mobile devices and tablets:


This is the end of the brief overview of setting up a ReadyNAS appliance to work with the SME Cloud file Server.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather