Enterprise File Fabric™
The Microsoft SkyDrive site is currently working in read-only mode. This means folder creation and upload is not functioning.
Microsoft’s SkyDrive site acknowledges the problem when you try and upload or create a folder and post a message that they are working to resolve it.
This means that using SkyDrive via SMEStorage will suffer from the same restrictions until this is fixed.
Note: this issue is now resolved
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It may be 2011 but there is no rest for the wicked, as they say ! We’ve been hard at work over the holiday period adding support for Windows Azure Blob Storage. This is now implemented and you can sign up for free from the site.
As well as working with the SMEStorage web interface, you can also access Windows Azure Blob Storage from our free Windows Dashboard client, Windows Tools (which also include virtual drive and desktop sync) Mac Virtual Drive, Linux tools, and of course our mobile clients which encompass iPad, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry.
Key features are:
– Map Network drives from any desktop OS to Azure Blob Storage
– Use the SMEStorage Lifetime Cloud package to connect to as many Windows Azure Blob Accounts you require.
– Create, browse or delete files and folders directly from the web or the desktop
– Manage your containers and blobs from the web or the windows desktop tools
– Create / Delete Rename blob containers
– Complete access from Mobile devices (iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry)
by I read a post by Gladinet yesterday that talked about why, in their opinion, an S3 compatible API is not a good idea, and to be honest I was surprised at their viewpoint. If an S3 compatible API is such a bad idea, why do Eucalyptus offer it ? Why do Mezeo ? Why do Google Storage ? I’ll tell you why, because right now Amazon S3 is the big gorilla in Cloud Storage and to make it easy for developers, and tool vendors, to move to/use their platforms they are offering the nearest thing there is to a standard (apart from WebDav….and I’ll come back to that), which is an S3 compatible interface, or way into their storage clouds.
If you extend that thinking further you can see why it would be useful to users, developers, and Organisations, to use an S3 API above other Storage Clouds, that don’t currently have it. For example using an S3 endpoint with RackSpace or Google Docs could solve some key integration problems if you already use S3 and want to manage files against these clouds.
The issue really is about standards, and the lack of standard API’s in Cloud. There is an old, but still relevant ,post from Gartner on this that I tend to agree with. Having standardised API’s from day one is not good because it stifles innovation, however the basic object cloud storage is pretty basic in terms of an API and for lots of users, developers, and companies, being able to standardise around the dominant API, has in certain circumstances, many benefits.
This brings me back to WebDav. Dav was the first real (and still the only) standard for working with files over http. I’m amazed by how many vendors don’t support it as an entry point to their cloud ie. Google Docs, Amazon S3, RackSpace Cloud Files, DropBox etc etc. Someone made a comment to me recently that WebDav “was so 20th century”. It made me smile as WebDav is still one of the most implemented integration points for Applications. Consider the Apple App Store. It’s two years old and there are a myriad of Applications that support WebDav and also have to support the clouds that don’t support WebDav, and if your cloud is not on the list, then, well it’s tough ! Need a more recent example? The new Nokia N8 Smartphone. It supports WebDav as a native client and users have already picked up that they can use our service to access their cloud data on the device. When we launched our ubiquitous WebDav over any cloud (whether it support it natively or not), CloudDav interface, we did it because we had the same frustrations. We launched this on August 25th. In only 3 months it is responsible for 30% of our traffic and it has lead to a huge increase in our user base ! That is an amazing statistic and shows that users really want standardisation when it enables them to access their data the way they want to, and of course this is our raison d’etre 😉
Interestingly, in the past Gladinet also had a positive point of view about the S3 API, at least in earlier blog posts, so I’m not sure what lead to their change of heart, but one thing is for sure, I expect more storage companies, not less, to continue issuing compatible S3 endpoints as entry points into their storage clouds.
by We’re happy to roll out support for another API that is becoming ubiquitous. In this case it is the Amazon S3 API. This is already used in solutions such as Eucalyptus Walrus, and we have now also added it as entry point for files accessed through our Cloud Gateway.
What does this mean ? It means you can use the S3 compatible API to access your files on Google Docs, or Google Storage, or RackSpace Cloud Files, or MIcrosoft SkyDrive, or any of the many other Clouds that we support.
For those interested, moving from a file based structure to a flat file object structure was achieved using the depth first algorithm within the implementation mapping to our API.
Lets look at a practical implementation of this using a tool that supports S3 compatible endpoints, CloudBerry explorer. We’ll use this to access our Google Docs, although we could have chosen DropBox, or any other number of clouds to access.
After launching the free version of CloudBerry explorer Choose File-Walrus Accounts
Choose to add an account and fill in the endpoint as ‘s3.storagemadeeasy.com’ and the QueryID as your SME username. You can obtain the API key from logging into the SME website and going to “My Account” from the sidebar and copying the API key from where it says “API secret Key”
Now you can choose to access the service using the CloudBerry exlorer:
and you can browse, download, upload files:
You can find out more on the SME Wiki
by The new Nokia N8 is a next generation smartphone from Nokia. We’ve had a few requests as to whether we will build a mobile client for it. The answer ? There is no need. The Nokia N8 has an integrated WebDav client built directly into the phone and with our CloudDav implementation we are able to offer WebDav access into many clouds, even if the underlying cloud does not support WebDav (which Google Docs, Amazon S3, RackSpace Cloud Files and DropBox don’t).
To start managing your files directly from your N8 phone with WebDav you need to do the following:
1. Register for a free account for your clouds of choice with SMEStorage.com
2. Purchase the CloudDav add-on. You can do this from the “Purchase add-on’s” link in the sidebar.
3. Now go to your N8 phone and ensure you have a WiFi or data-connection
4. Go to Menu -> Applications -> Office.
5. Go to File Manager-> Options ->Map new Drive
6. Enter ‘SMEStorage’ for the name of the drive to be mapped
7. Enter the SMEStorage WebDav url (https://webdav.storagemadeeasy.com)
8. Select the access point you would like
9. Provider the username and then the password for your SMEStorage account.
10.Now tap the ‘back’ button.
11. You will now see the file listed in the File Manager and you can tap to connect (as long as you have a data connection)
You will now see your file listing for the clouds you have mapped to your SMEStorage Account
Using CloudDav and the N8 WebDav feature in this way, you can not only access files, but copy files, create new files, and delete files from a multitude of storage clouds directly from your phone.
by iSMEStorage 2.0 is now in the App Store. It has a ton of new features, which you can refer to from our prior post. There is unfortunately a bug that was picked up on release when using the folder actions when in the Cloud Files view which crashes the App. We’ve already issued a 2.01 release fix for this and this should be in the App Store around about the 5th November if Apple keep to their normal weeks approval timeline.
In the meantime we put together a short slide set so you can have a quick browse of the features in the 2.0 release:
by We’ve been surprised by the huge success of the work we did with CloudDav which enables you to access your Cloud Files from any of the storage clouds we support using WebDav, even if the underlying Storage Cloud itself does not support it.
With that in mind we’ve been working on something even more innovative and that is enabling you to access any of your Cloud Files using the Amazon S3 API. This will mean that you will be able to use existing Amazon S3 tools, scripts etc that support the ability to specify your own endpoint to directly access Cloud Storage on Cloud such as Google Docs, DropBox, RackSpace, SkyDrive etc. We think this will prove just as useful to many developers, individuals and companies as our CloudDav layer has been.
by We’ve updated our SkyDrive Provider to support Windows Live Essentials / Windows Live Sync files. Live Sync files appear as a folder within your “My SkyDrive files” contained within the Virtual Cloud File System on the SMEStorage gateway. This means you can now access your Live Essentials files from Mac and Linux, as well as Android, iPhone/iPad and BlackBerry.
As with accessing the files directly via SkyDrive, the files in this directory are read only and can only be downloaded. Anything in your Live Sync directory is for download only ie. you cannot upload files in this directory via our Gateway.
by There is a host of new features coming in the next release of iSMEStorage for the iPad and iPhone.
Those of note include:
– Support for new cloud providers – DropbBox, Zimbra Briefcase and Files AnyWhere
– Cut and Paste of files between directories and also between clouds !
– Ability to set the Sync directory to any Cloud Directory
– Explicit support for FileBox from the Menu
– Ability from within the App to set Folders as favourites.
And there may be some other surprises in there also……
We should be releasing this to Apple before the end of the week and Apple normally take about a week to turn this around.
by We’ve put together a short video showing how you can use the SMEStorage Android Application to work with your Zimbra Briefcase files on the move. This is just one mobile client, you can of course choose to use the iPad/iPhone or BlackBerry Client to achieve the same thing. You can also choose to use other clouds that we support either on their own or in conjunction with Zimbra briefcase depending on your package options.
by We rolled out some Organisation Cloud updates on our web platform in the last few weeks that are worth highlighting:
Lite File Manage now supports Tags
Our Lite File Manager started life as lightweight alternative to the rich Ajax enabled File Manager. Gradually it has been updated so that it has the same functionality as the Ajax enabled File Manager. Tags is one of the last things to be added, and now that it is there it replicates the functionality of the Ajax based file manager but is much more lightweight:
Ability to make a Folder a Favourite item
Many of our mobile users have long requested the ability to make a Folder a favourite so they could click on ‘Favourites’ and easily navigate to a folder structure or set of files. The first step towards enabling this in the mobile platforms was to enable it in the Web platform and API which is now done. Indeed if you are a mobile user, marking a folder as favourite from the web platform should already show up within the Favourites Menu of each of the mobile Apps.
Organisation Folder permission
An Organisation Folder is a public folder that, when created by the Organisation Cloud Administrator, ripples down for every user so that, for example if the Org Cloud Admin creates a folder called ‘HR’, all users would see this folder and anything it contains. Users, by default, could also post to this folder. Many of you wanted to control the permissions on a per user basis to these folders, and we have now implemented this into the platform. The Org Admin can now set permissions for individual users of the Org Cloud.
Email attachments and files directly to your Organisation Folder
We recently introduced FileBox that enables user to send emails and attachments to a special folder called FileBox. You can read more about this here. We’ve also added this into The Organisation Cloud so that Org Admin’s can set a special Filebox email address for Organisation Folders enabling users of The Org Cloud to email file attachments directly to an Organisation Folder.
Private Cloud Providers for Organisation Users
One of the biggest updates we have implemented is to enable the Organisation Cloud Admin to control end users ability to add their own File clouds. When is this useful ? Take Google Apps for example. If your Organisation has bought into Google Apps then each of your users will have their own Google Docs account. Your user will want to use their own Google Docs Account, and you may want to implement a separate Google Docs Account to store shared Organisation Files. This is the kind of scenario this caters for. Of course you can also let users add their own private clouds or implement other shared Organisation storage, such as Amazon S3. This feature can be enabled in the My Account->Options tab of the Organisation Admin account.
Enhanced Auditing
We’ve beefed up the file auditing capabilities of the whole Organisation Cloud Platform which enables an Organisation Admin to control exactly what gets audited for each user.. We’ve also added filters and enhanced the export abilities so that you can export logs directly into CSV for example.
File Locking
We’ve added the ability to explicitly lock files. This is useful if a file is being worked upon or edited and you want to make the file unavailable to all other users until this has been done.
We’ve already started to move some of these new features into our desktop and mobile tooling and we will start pushing out some new versions of these soon.
by We have many users who use our OpenOffice plug-in to easily edit and save their files to/from OpenOffice. This is solution is fairly transparent to the end user as the plug-in installs itself as a toolbar option and is very easy to use. There are numerous blog posts outlining how this can be done. As OpenOffice has a plug-ins site the plug-in is fairly easy to find and download and has a reasonable amount of visibility.
What you may not know is that we also have the same plug-in available for Microsoft Office. This also install itself as a Toolbar plug-in and makes editing and saving files / to-from Google Docs just as transparent as its OpenOffice cousin ! The toolbar is free to download, and a Google Docs account is free to register. The short video below shows how the easy the solution is to work with.
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