Cloud File Sharing Singapore
Are you looking for a reliable cloud file sharing for business?
Look, there are so many tools that can do file sharing.
Which cloud file sharing solution is the right fit for you? Every tool out there claims that they are suitable for you.
Today you’re going to see the trend, benefits and practical examples of how it works.
In fact:
We’re going to show you the same checklist that we used to seize the right business cloud file sharing for our customers.
And, you’ll be crystal clear of your needs.
Overview of Cloud File Sharing
Cloud file sharing is for you if you need files to be shared with your team or synced across multiple tablets, phone, laptop, and PC.
Information is the lifetime of the modern enterprise, and it is growing at a breakneck rate.
Today’s business users want digital transformation – a simple, easy way to file sync & share in their office environment that allows them to access their files seamlessly on all kinds of devices, and collaborate with customers, colleagues, and partners.
When you start to sync, your master snapshot of files gets compared to what is available on a computer.
If there are any changed files, they get synced from the master collection.
Because all these new devices have communications built into them. They can all talk to the cloud whenever they want.
Steve Jobs
Traditional File Sharing Method (aka Caveman technology)
Email Attachment
Save in Computer
Thumbdrive or Portable Hard Disk
Workgroup Sharing
Windows File Server
Simple NAS
When you got a cheap and simple NAS, it serves well for backup purposes. However, it’s not meant for file sharing as it does not have the capacity. How do you know if you’ve one in your office IT setup? Simple. Does it allow you to add a new app from NAS (just like iPhone adding new apps)? If no, it’s only a big hard disk.
What is Cloud File Sharing?
Cloud Storage
Whenever you see a cloud file sharing, it’s referring to cloud storage.
Cloud file sharing is an additional software feature when you store files in cloud storage.
Cloud storage allows you to retrieve your files anywhere. It is more than just big hard disk space for your data.
Most cloud providers bundle the storage with software features like backup and file sync.
Main Benefits
You Enjoy
Work anywhere you like
Cloud file sync & share provide seamless access to all your essential data from wherever you are
Get Your Files Anywhere
Today’s workers are more mobile than ever. With file sync and share, you have the latest information instantly, no matter how the file was updated. Even without the internet, you can view, share and edit any document, wherever you are.
Users and Security Settings
While accessing data on the move is essential for business, security is still the primary concern. With proper configuration, you can control over who has access and what they can do. Now you can share and collaborate on large files without the barrier of inconvenient FTP and other unreliable, insecure file sharing solutions.
Team Sharing
To get things done, you need collaboration. You can add, edit or move – everyone on the team can collaborate quickly and is always looking at the latest version. When the needs of your project changes, you can easily add or remove people.
Selective File Sync
What files to sync? You sync only the folders and files you’re currently working on. Besides, you save hard disk space too. Every team members in your company are kept in sync while your IT personnel has the admin tools and robust security they need to manage it all, quickly.
disadvantages of
cloud file sharing
Why?
No matter how secure a cloud solution, it’s a bigger target where a hacker wants to test on their hacking skills.
Furthermore, your confidential information replicates across several data centers for backup and redundancy. In other words, your data does reside in several locations if the cloud provider has a worldwide presence.
Also, the administrators in the data center to have access to your data if they need to do some form of troubleshooting.
What are the popular business cloud file sharing?
With a few clicks, you can set up a cloud file sharing for your company almost immediately.
The business cloud file sharing tools that we are examining are Google, OneDrive, Dropbox Business, and Box.
These are, from our experience with many cloud file sharing tools so far, the strongest contenders currently in the field.
We chose these four contenders because they are among the very few that don’t fail when we do practical file sharing.
Based on pricing and storage space alone is not enough. There are many factors to consider too. For example, upload speed and file permission capacity.
We’ll now walk you through 4 business cloud file sharing tools to compare how they handle file sharing and permission from both desktop and mobile.
If you want to give your colleagues a straightforward, slick file sharing experience –
Dropbox Business delivers.
For a monthly or yearly fee, Dropbox Business has 3 plans (Standard, Advance and Enterprise) that give you the power to do file sharing.
The variation in these plans differs on the number of advanced administrative features you need like better support, security and useful insights.
That’s pretty awesome because you can gain visibility on all Dropbox usage and even can control the number of connected devices.
DEDICATED LIVE SUPPORT
MORE THAN 300K CUSTOMERS
ADVANCED SECURITY FEATURES
Your Dropbox Business Backend Experience
Connecting Dropbox Business and do file sharing is fast, streamlined and easy. The overall experience feels like a lot like a guided tour, which is enjoyable.
Your Colleague’s Frontend Experience
From your colleague’s perspective, the Dropbox Business file sharing experience will look similar to free Dropbox basic. All the personal content will stay the same — your files will remain where they are, and all your settings.
However, there are two significant differences:
First, Dropbox gives your colleague the option to send share link for team members instead of just asking for email input. This feature becomes especially useful as you’re sending to the frequent internal users.
How Permission Works for Dropbox
There are two methods to share a file with your team members or external parties.
Web or Dropbox Sync method.
If you’re sharing a file or folder, you should be giving at least view permission.
File Settings
When you share a file, you can show viewer info to your team members and people who can edit.
What Dropbox Business Will Cost You
Dropbox Business offers 2 yearly subscription plans ranging from $12.50 per user per month up to $20 a month.
Dropbox Business Wrap-Up
The most critical service Dropbox business provides on top of its cloud file sharing tool is its simplicity, shared link settings, 120-day versioning, and reporting features.
The only real downside to Dropbox is that you cannot set up a complex folder structure. You have edit and view options. Moreover, Dropbox assumes that if you give someone access to the top folder, the same user should have access to the subfolders as well.
However, if you’re okay with a standard folder permission structure, Dropbox business is likely the best and easy solution for you to facilitate cloud file sharing for your team members.
Google Drive for Business is a pioneer in the cloud business.
It’s a popular solution for collaborating in real-time, all under one suite. With the suite, you can create content, store files, chat and control security. Best of all? You can do everything in an internet browser.
ALL IN ONE SUITE
MARKET LEADER
BUSINESS-GRADE SECURITY
Your Google Drive Backend Experience
After the setup of Google drive, the file sharing setup and overall settings take place from within your internet browser. It works best on Chrome, which is another Google product.
Google Drive offers excellent security control to your storage. Unless your organization has a tight security policy, the default settings are good enough.
The backend setup experience requires some technical knowledge on DNS as it ties in with your company web domain. Honestly, it can be a bit overwhelming for a non-technical person. You might end up messing up your email records.
However, once you complete the whole Google drive setup, it’s easy to use especially if you already have an existing personal google account.
Your Colleague’s Frontend Experience
Your team member’s default frontend experience with Google Drive looks similar to a personal account.
What Google Drive Will Cost You
Google drive offers three monthly subscription plans ranging from $5 per month up to $25 a month.
Google Drive Wrap-Up
The essential service Google drive provides on top of its cloud file sharing is its whole suite features like chat, email, and tools to create content.
This niche is most suitable for industries with mobile workers. For example, property, insurance, and part-timers. It also makes sense to use Google suite if your company does not intend to buy any Microsoft office software for each colleague.
Overall, the upload speed of many huge files to Google drive is the best among the rest of contenders.
The only real downside to Google suite is that, if you operate your office internet has an outage, that can bring a halt in your business.
Also, if you open a high formatting content created by Microsoft office in Google drive, the appearance may differ. After all, both Google and Microsoft use different formatting for her tools. The interface can be messy when you have many files and long names.
Sharepoint Online
Onedrive serves as the cloud storage for Sharepoint online. It works seamlessly when you share files between Microsoft office tools.
You can subscribe Sharepoint online as a standalone or purchase as a bundle from Office 365.
SEAMLESS COLLABORATION
MORE THAN 200K CUSTOMERS
CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Your Sharepoint Online Backend Experience
The Office 365 dashboard is the place for an administrator to add new users to the Sharepoint Online. Here enables you to allow external users to access the Sharepoint sites.
The Sharepoint Online backend feels clunkier than the rest of cloud solutions. After you’re done with Sharepoint sites and creating the files structure, you can further tweak the Sharepoint settings.
Sharepoint by itself is a powerful solution. That said, it can look very overwhelming to a non-technical person.
Your Team Member’s Sharepoint Frontend Experience
When your team member arrives on your private Sharepoint site, they experience like a forum style whereby they can access the shared files and news update.
If you are sharing a file to a person outside your company (e.g., IT outsourcing vendor), Sharepoint reminds you again of this action.
This sharing is only allowed provided your administrator has permitted such sharing permission.
What Sharepoint Will Cost Your Business
Sharepoint Online offers two yearly subscription plans ranging from $12.50 per user per month up to $20 a month.
Sharepoint Online Wrap-Up
If you want a cloud file sharing tool that can do advanced file permission, use Sharepoint online.
Setup is complex. It is challenging to install it on your own, and you may need to engage an IT specialist. In the beginning, it takes training and time to understand how Sharepoint works. However, once you got the hang of it, it’s quite easy.
Microsoft support is top notch, and they usually get back to you by the next working day. Upon your request, the support does remote access to your PC to resolve the issue.
This tool is most suitable for companies that are already a heavy user of Microsoft Office and does not have an on-premise file server. Sharepoint is suitable for planning multilingual sites too. Using Sharepoint concurrently can increase work productivity.
The web interface is not always smooth. Sometimes you’ll be prompted to re-login again, which is quite frustrating.
We notice that once you have tens of thousands of files to be sync, sometimes the sync stopped working. You’ll need to reset the syncing again.
Box
Box delivers a slick, well-thought cloud file sharing experience for business users. Moreover, you can view 120+ types of files, including Word, Excel, PDF, AI, EPS, PSD, photos and more—without downloading a single file.
Surprisingly, Box has advanced access rights over file sharing. It does provide a high level of security and governance.
Moreover, Box integrates with thousands of applications that let you share, edit, manage, analyze and collaborate with all types of data. For example, integrate your company website with box.
INTEGRATE WITH YOUR APPS
FOCUS ON ENTERPRISE
REAL TIME NOTES TAKING
Your Box Backend Experience
Creating a new Box account and setting up users and files structure is fast, streamlined and easy. The overall Box experience feels a lot like Dropbox.
Your Team Member’s Frontend Experience
Like the rest, Box gives team members an easy way to share files and folders.
Box also allows you to set password and expiration date for a link shared.
When setting up your link in Box, you give it a name if you don’t like the long default link provided.
What Box Will Cost You
Box offers 3 monthly subscription plans ranging from SGD$10 per month up to $45 a month.
Box Wrap-Up
Box account is set up in no time, and the interface is also very user-friendly. The box is great for sharing files with the whole team, to any location. Box has made it easy to store, transfer, and track online processing of applications and data we need to use from multiple locations.
The level of user privileges can be modified. The security-related features are quite powerful, as it allows you to set users as editors, reviewers, etc. it can be viewed online without the need to download the documents, thus streamlining the process,
The real downside of the box is sometimes there can be conflicts when two or more people are editing the same file online simultaneously. There are no easy ways to search for things. Although, to be fair there is a folder grouping tool that you can use to organize the content and documents.
Growing Trend of Cloud File Sharing
Are you comfortable to place confidential information like your login, salary, company financial data, and tender quotations in the cloud? Or big file size like Autocad drawing and software? Probably not.
On the other hand, do you have any IT skilled person to take care of your on-premise storage? If there’s fire in the office, do you have an offsite backup for your data? Probably not too.
Hybrid Cloud
Suggested files to be placed at the on-premise storage
Suggested files to be placed at cloud
Frequently accessed information that is shared by your internal team members. Eg. Quotation, Data Sheet
Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud
Private cloud refers to dedicated cloud storage for your use only.
For example, the on-premise file server with remote access, network attached storage (NAS) or file server hosted in your own data center.
Public cloud storage refers to shared cloud storage open for paid subscription. For example, Sharepoint and Google drive.
Should you use a private cloud (e.g., NAS) or a public cloud (e.g., OneNote) for business cloud file sharing?
Private Cloud
Private cloud is suitable if your company has an IT person to set up and maintain the private cloud. Moreover, you want a vast storage space and prefer a one-time upfront investment over recurring payment.
Pros:
Cheaper provided hardware last more than three years and big headcount
Cons:
Public Cloud
Public cloud is suitable if you want the solution and don’t like the idea of maintaining own hardware. However, you need to pay a recurring subscription as long as you want the services. The moment you stop paying, the services stop as well.
Pros:
No need to spend IT maintenance cost on hardware
Cons:
Overall Recommendations
When it comes to selecting a business cloud file sharing tool to share your files quickly, the right solution comes down to understanding three things about your company needs:
How many resources do you want to spend on setting up file sharing?
Do you require standard or advanced file sharing permission?
Where are your users mostly located?
Does the cloud file sharing integrate well with your existing infrastructure and software?
After learning about the pro and cons of cloud, and top cloud file sharing services, which solution feels like the best fit for your business needs?
Here’s a checklist you to check if your organization has such needs:
Able to send upload links to outside clients or vendors.
Good desktop app that preferably integrates with Outlook.
Large upload file size limit.
Access from tablets/mobile easily.
Can connect with a third-party application
Has the ability to notify when two or more people open the same file.
Capable to block mobile devices from leaving colleagues.
Prompt support response time.
Friendly to work worldwide, with no blocks.
Case Study