I'm fairly excited about this, I hope it's "just works" appeal come's close to the DropBox experience.
I run the IT shop for a non-profit, which has just started to expand globally. I've been brought in to help ease the pain. We've got nearly everything web-based, except for the damn "shared drive". We just can't afford to set up a permanent VPN connection to all of our new offices (and all of the road-warriors)... nor do I want to.
I'm testing Alfresco now (http://www.alfresco.com/), which is basically an open-source SharePoint. It's web-based, with file versioning (and other bells and whistles) but best of all it emulates a SMB/CIFS share, so the transition is easy for the main office. Hopefully it works well and I can implement it.
But as an avid dropbox user, even this huge leap feels so old-school. It'd be great if remote users could "subscribe" to some of the folders, so they could work with files more quickly and offline. It's the future.
An open-source DropBox allows for corporate implementations ("my data stays on my servers" types), and also permits tie-ins to other open-source projects (like Alfresco). The service won't be as bullet-proof and smooth, but the mashups will be interesting.
Edit: DropBox should really offer corporate solutions. We're poor, and I think we'd spend money if I could sync our shared folders out to their servers, and let all my users access it from their beautiful web interface. That alone (without the client features) would be worth it.
Synctus (my startup: http://www.synctus.com) does something similar. It is an always-on hardware appliance for each office that Just Works - including NAT traversal. It presents an SMB/CIFS share that is the same regardless of which office you are at. Drop me a line if you think it could be useful for you.
Synctus is different from Dropbox and presumably SparkleShare because it focuses on emulating a single office SMB/CIFS share exactly, including locking so that synchronisation conflicts never happen - and this means that it needs each appliance to be usually-on (so road warriors still need to VPN in to access a particular share or use Dropbox or similar).
Neat product. This won't work for us since I'm trying to get away from CIFS (it's the transition that's hard), but I can imagine many situations where this would be very useful.
Sure beats fighting with windows replication, and has a lot of benefits over rsyncing.
I saw Tonido in This Week in Startups episode 55. I immediately downloaded it. Very impressive. I am in love with it already. I rate high up there next to DB.
You can create shares and assign guest accounts to them. The users will be able to load as a drive in their computers from LAN and over internet.
I would suggest you to try the workspace application that comes with Tonido. Some NGOs are using it successfully to sync tasks, calendar, notes and files. The closest application that you can compare is microsoft groove.
Comments
I'm fairly excited about this, I hope it's "just works" appeal come's close to the DropBox experience.
I run the IT shop for a non-profit, which has just started to expand globally. I've been brought in to help ease the pain. We've got nearly everything web-based, except for the damn "shared drive". We just can't afford to set up a permanent VPN connection to all of our new offices (and all of the road-warriors)... nor do I want to.
I'm testing Alfresco now (http://www.alfresco.com/), which is basically an open-source SharePoint. It's web-based, with file versioning (and other bells and whistles) but best of all it emulates a SMB/CIFS share, so the transition is easy for the main office. Hopefully it works well and I can implement it.
But as an avid dropbox user, even this huge leap feels so old-school. It'd be great if remote users could "subscribe" to some of the folders, so they could work with files more quickly and offline. It's the future.
An open-source DropBox allows for corporate implementations ("my data stays on my servers" types), and also permits tie-ins to other open-source projects (like Alfresco). The service won't be as bullet-proof and smooth, but the mashups will be interesting.
Edit: DropBox should really offer corporate solutions. We're poor, and I think we'd spend money if I could sync our shared folders out to their servers, and let all my users access it from their beautiful web interface. That alone (without the client features) would be worth it.
Synctus (my startup: http://www.synctus.com) does something similar. It is an always-on hardware appliance for each office that Just Works - including NAT traversal. It presents an SMB/CIFS share that is the same regardless of which office you are at. Drop me a line if you think it could be useful for you.
Synctus is different from Dropbox and presumably SparkleShare because it focuses on emulating a single office SMB/CIFS share exactly, including locking so that synchronisation conflicts never happen - and this means that it needs each appliance to be usually-on (so road warriors still need to VPN in to access a particular share or use Dropbox or similar).
Neat product. This won't work for us since I'm trying to get away from CIFS (it's the transition that's hard), but I can imagine many situations where this would be very useful.
Sure beats fighting with windows replication, and has a lot of benefits over rsyncing.
Try http://www.tonido.com. It offers a remote drive feature. Will satisfy all your requirements listed here.
I saw Tonido in This Week in Startups episode 55. I immediately downloaded it. Very impressive. I am in love with it already. I rate high up there next to DB.
Hmm... interesting. Can you give user-specific logins to keep track of who's changed what?
You can create shares and assign guest accounts to them. The users will be able to load as a drive in their computers from LAN and over internet.
I would suggest you to try the workspace application that comes with Tonido. Some NGOs are using it successfully to sync tasks, calendar, notes and files. The closest application that you can compare is microsoft groove.