Syncplicity (see previous CloudAve coverage), the cloud based file storage and management company, yesterday announced the release of additional features for their Business Edition. This will help them compete harder with services like Sugarsync, Box.Net, etc. in the business space. With this release, Syncplicity makes it clear that they want to target the corporate accounts.
In this announcement, Syncplicity announced two new features which many business users have come to expect from any cloud storage vendor. They are
- Newsfeeds – which offers information about the activities of an user. This helps not only with collaboration among different users but also on compliance related issues
- Deeper Mac Support – In today’s world, service providers cannot get away with offering support for just Windows OS. Users have come to expect support for both Mac and Linux. Only a handful of vendors offer native support for Linux (Dropbox is one such example) but almost every vendor offer Mac support. Syncplicity has gone one level further and offer a deeper integration with Mac OSX so that users can deal with the service from the Finder much like how they deal with Windows Explorer on Windows machines. This is a welcome feature and I am sure many Mac users will be happy about this
I will try to compare Syncplicity with some of the other providers who also offer Business Editions of their storage service. I will use the “Pros and Cons format” to highlight the advantages of Syncplicity from my point of view.
Pros:
- Their integration with Google Docs. With Google Apps slowly gaining foothold in the business marketplace (especially in the SME sector), this integration is valuable even if it appears redundant to some folks
- They have integrated with Google Apps Single Sign-on. This will be very handy for SMEs using Google Apps extensively
- Their extensive management layer which offers support for policy configuration, reporting and administration. This is going to be very handy for business with regulatory requirements
- Support for some of the SaaS applications like Google Docs, Zoho, etc.. There will be more options available in the future
- Their storage architecture is built in such a way that they can offer native support for any device
Cons:
- The price may be a bit higher than competing services, especially for really small businesses (<10 employees) who don’t need such an extensive management layer. However, I do want to state that their price matches the feature set they offer. It is just my argument that some of the small businesses may not need these features and they might find the pricing of Sugarsync, for example, more attractive
- Lack of support for mobile devices at this moment. They did tell me that it is on their roadmap and they have a pretty good mobile website. But, support for iOS and Android devices is a standard feature with almost every other cloud storage vendor
Conclusion
Syncplicity is one of the feature rich cloud storage vendor I have come across in this space. If I am an IT admin, I will be very impressed with their management layer which offers fine grained access control and reporting. The level of admin control they offer is simply amazing. They have positioned themselves very well with their Business Edition but this space is very crowded and they have an uphill task in front of them. I am going to closely watch them and report back here in this space.
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- New Syncplicity Business Edition Release Delivers Corporate File Management in the Cloud With Mac Support, Newsfeeds and IT Console (eon.businesswire.com)
- Syncplicity Launches Business Edition for Enterprise File Management (appscout.com)
