Enterprise File Fabric™
How is cloud collaboration done today ? Perhaps this scenario may sound familiar. There is a need to share a file with someone so it is attached to an email and the recipient takes a copy of the file, edits it, and then send it back attached to a fresh email !
Why is this process so common ? It is because collaborating on files stored in different places outside of a local network is just hard.
Continue reading “How File Locking Facilitates Collaboration In The Cloud”
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As more and more companies use the Cloud to replace their existing file server the need for similar functionality to that which existed on-premise becomes important. Once such features is file locking.
File locking simply allows a user to lock a file whilst updating to prevent another user editing the same file. If locking does not exist then at worse conflicts occur, at best file updates get overwritten and perhaps even lost. It is a key piece of a collaboration experience.
Storage Made Easy private enterprise file share and sync solution fully supports file locking through all of its web, desktop and mobile clients. When a file is locked, other users only have read only access to it.
In addition to locking, file versioning goes hand in hand as a key feature. Versioned files are files that have been superseded by newer files but which can be kept for audit or archived purposes and which can later be promoted to replace newer version of a file if needed. Storage Made Easy EFSS solution provides full support for both of these features using its unique visual versioning feature.
The problem with current file sync and share solutions is they miss many of the features needed to really use them as a file server replacement. This do not just include locking and versioning, but also CIFS access from the desktop, file event audit, access over common protocols such as WebDav or FTP, ability to be deployed private and to work with other storage clouds or data points, solve the shadow IT problem etc. The solution from most solution providers is the “my cloud is better than their cloud” approach i.e.. “move to my solution as we have that feature”. This promotes more silos and exacerbates sprawl.
The Storage Made Easy is storage independent and promote interoperability and integration, working with any combination of storage points, be they public or private, so if you have existing solutions that require global locking, versioning, event Audit, Cloud Governance, amongst other things, SME can help.
In summary For companies that have data stored in the cloud, in one or more storage providers, global file locking and versioning should be considered a mandatory feature for enterprise file share and sync.
by We have now added support for visual versioning of files in the SMEStorage web platform to easily identify and manage files that have been edited or changed by individual and business users of the Cloud File Server.
The Cloud File Server Admin can manage whether files versioning is turned on or off, and can also choose whether versioned files are visible in desktop and mobile clients.
Visual versioning is an enhancement we have made in the web application so that users can easily identify which files are versioned, and if they choose to, even easily promote previous versions of files.
If a file is promoted then all user comments attached to the file being replaced move to the file that is promoted so that there is consistency.
Versioning works on files above any of the numerous storage clouds that are supported by the SMEStorage platform. This means that the same files shared between organisations and stored on different storage clouds can still be tracked and versioned as if they resided on the same data service
The visual versioning feature is available now for all existing, and new, users of the SMEStorage SaaS platform.
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