TheSMESpace Blog

There was an interesting post on PC World recently that asks the question “What happens to the data when an online storage site closes?”. After all two of the main reasons for offline storage are for backup and for access.
What we are starting to see happen in the world of online storage is consolidation and of course the non sustainability of ‘free’ business models. As the article states, “Online storage services that have announced closings in the past ten months include big names in tech: AOL (Xdrive and AOL Pictures), Hewlett-Packard (Upline), Sony (Image Station), and Yahoo (Briefcase). Plenty of lesser-known online storage firms also have kicked the bucket, including Digital Railroad and Streamload MediaMax, which turned into The Linkup.”


One of the reasons we never used proprietary storage services for SMEStorage is that, ultimately, it is very difficult to keep up with the big guys in terms of price. Just look at Amazon. They are the 1oo pound gorilla of being able to sell at a high volume for low margin.


At SMEStorage we have concentrated on providing interoperability with best-of-breed Storage providers and building value services over and above this. For example things such as clients for different platforms, integrations with the best-of-breed Web 2.0, Desktop and social media tools. Innovations such as Email-backup-to-storage, and the ability to move data about from one storage provider to another. Or even have a real-time Cloud Data Backup which, if the primary provider disappears, will have kept the data in sync and available with a secondary provider. Key to this is that you own your data, not us.


If you are using our free Amazon S3 service we give you 250MB, but even using these you are free at any time to export it to any other provider you want at any time, including our other free services such as email-as-a-cloud or gmail-as-a-cloud, but of course you still own the account and therefore the data.


We believe that the most valuable thing is your data and we will keep doing all we can to help you keep it safe, accessible, and available.

Today we launched a multi-cloud file sharing clipboard on our web platform. This allows you to store multiple file links in a clipboard that is stored between sessions. Once you have stored all the links you wish to you can choose to share them over email or with your collaboration groups.


The clipboard can store file links that are stored in multiple clouds which are viewed through our virtual cloud file system.

Today we released our Organisational Cloud Package. This is specifically for businesses who want to take advantage of Cloud Storage.  The Organisational Cloud package supports Amazon S3, Mosso Cloud Files, Box.net, Email-as-a-Cloud, Private Cloud, and GMail-as-a-Cloud.


Specific features are:


- Mix and Match Cloud Providers and view all your files from all providers in one File System





- Use one or more Cloud Providers between as many users as you prefer. We offer 5 and 10 user packages but ask us if you want more than this.


- Administrator can invite and manage users, decide which clouds are used, is responsible for public organisation folders, and can monitor logs.


      


- Use your preferred client - Web, Firefox plug-in, Windows Virtual Drive (with explorer, shell and sync tools), iGoogle, iPhone


- Easily Backup or import from different Cloud Providers, which also includes Google Docs and Evernote.


- Integration with Microsoft Office and Open Office


- All Backups can be scheduled to happen in real-time or offline at a specific time each hour,day,week or month.


- Support automated emails backup using POP3 or IMAP with plug-ins available for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express.


- Encrypt your files at any time using SHA-1 secure encryption. Only you have the private key so your files can be absolutely secure.


- Incorporate your own Private Organisation Cloud using a simple FTP Server. This can be used to access files in the virtual file system or even backup from private to public cloud or vice-versa.


- Web platform offers integrations with Zoho Office (create documents directly in the cloud), Evernote, Google Docs, Picnik (inline image editing), ScribD (view PDF’s and other documents), and Twitter (file share using Twitter or be notified of users sharing files with you)


- Rich Collaboration, document workflow and file sharing features.


- Ability to edit HTML, PHP, C++, Ruby, Python, .Net, JavaScript and other languages inline using built in code editor in the web platform.





- Sophisticated Filter mechanisms to deal with large volume of files