skydrive – Storage Made Easy Blog

January 6, 2014January 16, 2015

Accessing OpenStack, RackSpace, Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox + more using Storage Made Easy and Transmit for Mac

If you have come across this post whilst researching how to access other storage clouds from Transmit then have a look at our Getting Started Guide to show you how you can register for a free account and get on with mapping your chosen Storage Cloud to the SME Cloud Gateway. When you are ready you can register for a free account here.

As many of you who use it know, CloudDav, from SME adds a WebDav layer over any Cloud, even if the underlying clouds do not support WebDav. SME does no however allow the native Mac WebDav client to connect direct because the performance of the native Mac WebDav client is notoriously abysmal for those with large amounts of files.

You can however choose to use other Mac clients to connect to the Cloud Providers that you have mapped to the SME Gateway. We highlighted Forklift as such a client in a prior post, and you can also choose to use Transmit from Panic.

Once you have CloudDav enabled you can choose to access your clouds, mapped via the SME Gateway, through Transmit. First choose to connect over WebDav as in the screenshot below:

You can then choose to connect directly inside of Transmit or as a Virtual Drive that will appear in Finder.

Transmit also has a very nice sync feature that will sync between folder structures. In this way you can sync files with Transmit and SME from different Cloud Storage Providers to your desktop.

Initial view before Sync

The Sync screen after choosing Sync

The Sync Simulation

SME CloudDav is available with every account, even free accounts, although on free accounts it is restricted to 150MB of use per month. The CloudDav protocol Adaptor is just one of the protocol adaptors that SME provides, the others being FTP, SFTP and a compatible S3 API. All protocol adaptors are available in the Storage Made Easy Enterprise edition as part of the Cloud Gateway which the SME Enterprise File Share and Sync is built upon.

April 23, 2013April 23, 2013

The Top 5 things to Consider for Business File Sharing

File Sharing is a key part of a companies ability to collaborate and share corporate data, which increasingly can be stored in many disparate services. The purpose of this post is to offer suggestion businesses should consider for their corporate file sharing strategy:

Many business just let employees share files with no control and no checks. This needs a policy. This is the businesses core asset and it needs to be protected and secure. Also, compliance and legislation of data is increasingly becoming important. The business needs to ensure it does not get caught in a compliance trap.

Point 1: Implement a control mechanism for your users. For example Storage Made Easy enables users to share files using links that can be password protected and in which the link can be set to expire. This protects against the user forwarding file. The file link can be set to expire on first download for example or set to download after 24 hours (or any other specified time period). If the file is password protected, even if the file is forwarded by the recipient then the file cannot be accessed unless the password is provided. A control mechanism promotes best practice security management of files and reduces operational risk.

Point 2: Point Solution or not ? Consider whether your strategy should be a point solution or whether it works with your existing data sets. Many vendors may purport to promote managed secure file sharing but often you find you have to move your data to their Cloud to have the solution work for you. Storage Made Easy works with private on-premise data, public cloud data such as DropBox, SkyDrive, Box etc and also with SaaS services such as BaseCamp. This promotes a ‘joined up’ strategy for company file sharing.

Point 3: Integrates with what you have ? Consider whether the solution works how you work so that it does not get in the way of business or productivity. For example Storage Made Easy integrates directly in the desktop as a network drive with simple right click options to share files. This behaviour supports Windows, Mac and Linux. Also integration has been done with other core business productivity tools such as Microsoft Outlook and Mac Mail to promote easy secure file sharing using links directly from the corporate mail client. Similar integrations exists for core productivity tools such as Microsoft Office and Open Office or Libre Office.

Point 4: Compliance, Compliance Compliance – Compliance is fast catching up with all verticals when it comes to storing and accessing corporate files off site. There is specific industry legislation related to this, such as HIPPA in healthcare and FERPA in education, but there are various legislation proposals being processed at various levels in the USA and EU and it is a safe bet that the ability to track historic file events will become more of a requirement not less of a one. Also for companies, the ability to search against historic file sharing or data access should be just part of an overall joined up corporate security policy.

Point 5: On-Premise, Hybrid or Cloud ? The last point is to do with implementation. You should be able to decide how you manage data or metadata associated with storing files and sharing files. This can be behind the corporate firewall, totally on Cloud., or some combination of both. The key word here is choice.

August 15, 2012August 15, 2012

Native SkyDrive provider

Microsoft rolled out their changes to SkyDrive overnight which means that our native SkyDrive provider is currently in-operable. We are checking to see if it is possible to re-activate this with the new version of SkyDrive. Users can still use the native SkyDrive API provider. For an overview of the differences between the two please see our earlier blog post.

Update: This is now resolved and the native provider functions as normal

August 3, 2012August 3, 2012

Web File Manager Updates: Shared file link management improved

We have today updated the way in which shared links are managed for all Cloud Files mapped to an account from the web Cloud File Manager. It is now possible to have multiple links for a single file and to easily manage them. These file share links can be either a direct private share, a time expired share or a secure share. Please see the below video for a detailed overview.

May 21, 2012

Official SkyDrive API provider now supported

We have supported SkyDrive for quite a while now, even though it never had any official API. Recently SkyDrive added access to SkyDrive using OAuth with an official API. However the API does not support groups or shared files, or Live Mesh files that can be access from SkyDrive in the Web View. This left us with a bit of a dilemma as our existing SkyDrive provider does support these.

To that end we have decided to add support for the official SkyDrive API as a separate provider. The main differences between the two are:

Feature	SME SkyDrive Provider	SME Skydrive API provider
Support Groups	yes	no
Support Shared files	yes	no
Support Live mesh files	yes (read only)	no
Support Oauth security	no, username / password only	yes

This means that you will now have the choice of two SkyDrive Providers to choose from. The “official API” provider and the alternative that supports groups etc.

March 24, 2012March 24, 2012

How to sync files from Google Docs, SkyDrive, S3 and other Clouds with your BlackBerry Playbook

As we recently posted details about our HTML5 client for the BlackBerry Playbook we thought it would be useful to outline how you can sync files from any number of Clouds with your Playbook.

For this walk through we will be using a third party tool for the Playbook called Mobile FTP and the SMEStorage CloudFTP protocol adaptor. This solution will work with any free, personal or business Cloud File Server Account that has the Protocol Adaptor added to their account.

First purchase the Mobile FTP App for your Playbook and install it (t is £1.00)

Next setup the SME CloudFTP protocol adaptor connection in the App. This enables the SMEStorage Clouds you have mapped to your account to be accessible over FTP even if they don’t natively support FTP.

This will result in a new bookmark called SME FTP

At this point all your files are acessible through MobileFTP on the Playbook simply by selecting the bookmark and connecting

You can download files or upload them to the various cloud using the Mobile FTP App

Now we will set up Sync. First we need to create a bookmark of the directory we wish to sync within the Mobile FTP App. We wil choose a folder called ‘Android Docs’ that is hosted on Google Docs.

We will name the Bookmark “Docs to Sync”.

Now we’ll go back to the root of the Mobile FTP and edit the Sync example to change it for sync bookmark we just created:

We changed the name to “SME Sync GDocs” and chose the boomarked directory “Docs to Sync” as the directory to sync with the root of the SD Card. Now we can simply run the sync.

Once the sync is completed the nested directory structure and files are available from the SD card on the Playbook. We can re-run the sync when we wish to pick up any changes, and we can add as many sync profiles, to as many different clouds, as we wish.

October 5, 2011January 23, 2012

Cloud Computing Use Case: Sharing PDF’s stored on SkyDrive with an “on the road” team using Galaxy Tab and iPad’s

Given the propensity for so many different use cases that using the Cloud with Files can come up with we thought we’d start sharing some of the day-to-day use cases we deal with here on our blog.

This one is an inbound request in which a business has a series of PDF’s stored in a folder hierarchy on SkyDrive that they need to share with a distributed team that uses a combination of Galaxy Tab and iPad’s. The files need to be synchronised for offline use and the files can be updated each evening so the remote people need to be able to resync the files locally to get the latest versions for offline use.

Firstly lets address SlyDrive. In this event all the business needs to is to start using our Cloud File Server and add the SkyDrive Cloud to their account from the Cloud DashBoard. This starts a wizard in which the user is stepped through adding the SkyDrive Cloud.

Once this is done the Business Admin of the Cloud File Server needs to convert the folder containing the PDF’s into a shared Organization Folder. This means that any users that are added to the Cloud File Server will be able to see this folder.

The Business Cloud Admin can now choose to set the types of permissions that they wish to set on the folder (read only, etc).

Once this is done The Cloud Admin can add the users:

Now this is setup lets move to the tablet side. We’ll take the iPad first:

IPAD:

Each of the users that the Cloud File Server Admin added to the Cloud File Server can access their account using the iSMEStorage iPad App. once logged in they will be able to view files on the Cloud in a unique Cloud Files view.

However as per the business requirements we need to be able to sync the folder that was shared containing PDF’s down to the device. To do this the user needs to visit that particular folder in the Cloud File Manager and nominate the folder for local sync.

Once this is done the user can go to ‘My Syncs’ from the menu and action a sync which will download all the PDF’s locally. In future as the documents are updated overnight he just needs to visit My Syncs again and choose to resync which will download the newest files.

Galaxy Tab:

As with the iPad the user needs to visit the PDF directory from the Cloud Files view and nominate the PDF folder for Sync in the SMEStorage Android App.

Once this is done the user can return to My syncs, click on the directory and choose to sync. This will download the relevant PDF’s to the iPad. Again a sync can be done each day to update the latest files.

As there is less restriction on Android devices users can set the App to do a scheduled sync daily. Unfortunately this is not currently possible on the iPad.

June 24, 2011June 25, 2011

SkyDrive updated

As per the below posts, Microsoft re-launched SkyDrive and re-architected their site including the authentication access and implementation. This broke our SkyDrive connector and we have been working to re-implement it.

This work is now done, and if you were a new customer trying to connect you will now be able to. If you are an existing customer and want to be able to access your existing SkyDrive files from SMEStorage you will need to re-sync your files as the meta-link to access the files has now changed.

You can do this from:

The web: Log into your Account, click on My DashBoard, Choose ‘settings’ link next to skydrive provider and choose to re-sync.

From iOS: Log in, click on Cloud Providers, Click on the Sync icon to the right of SkyDrive

From Android: Log in, click on Cloud Providers, Click on SkyDrive, and from the Meny choose to ‘resync now’

From BlackBerry: Log in, click on Cloud Providers, Click SkyDrive, and from the Meny choose to ‘resync now’

From Windows: Log into the DashBoard, click on Cloud Providers, Click SkyDrive, and from the options choose to resync

From Mac: Choose to resync clouds from the SMEStorage toolbar

Live Mesh 2011:

Update: Live Mesh 2011 support has not been added. Any Live Mesh files will be available within a folder called Live Mesh 2011 with your SkyDrive files folder structure.

June 23, 2011June 23, 2011

SkyDrive Cloud Update

We now have the new SkyDrive implementation fully working in our Dev environment. We’ve delayed updating until we add the support for Live Mesh files. Once this is done we envisage updating later today (June 23rd).

June 22, 2011

SkyDrive Cloud Update

We are working hard to complete the SkyDrive implementation based on Microsoft’s changes. They did a large change which went from session based authentication to token based authentication which means that pretty much our whole connector had to be re-written.

We hope to have the revised connector implemented shortly and we will post here when this is done.

June 21, 2011

SkyDrive Cloud

It seems Microsoft made some changes to the authentication procedure for SkyDrive in the last few hours which results in SMEStorage users not being able to authenticate against SkyDrive. We are working to resolve this now and will post here when this is resolved.

June 16, 2011

Windows Mobile 7 Support – Progress

Support for Windows Mobile 7 has always been on our RoadMap. We view it as a strategic handset client, and we’re happy to say that the App is close to being completed. The screenshots below give an idea of how it will finally look:

We hope to have an App in the Windows Marketplace by the beginning of July.