In April 2007, I covered Egnyte, a capable but overly complex workgroup file-sharing application. Since then, based on complaints and concerns from people like me who found the service intriguing--but not enough to actually adopt it--the company has rebuilt Egnyte into a useful product that bears little resemblance to the 1.0. CEO Vineet Jain came by my office last week to show me the new product.
Egnyte is now an "online file server." Designed for small businesses, the pitch is that instead of going out and buying a file server for your workgroup, you instead rent server access from Egnyte. Each user gets a private folder and access to a common folder for sharing files with coworkers. Administration is easier than with a Windows-based server, access from outside the company network is easy to provide, and Egnyte gives you other services you might not otherwise have access to, like an archive of file revisions and iPhone access (a new feature) to the file stores.
New, simplified Egnyte provides worthwhile features for small business.
The service costs $15 per user per month for "power users," who get access to all Egnyte's features including backup and a virtual hard drive app for their desktop (there are versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux). Other people in your company can store and share files for free but don't get all the bells and whistles. There's no cap on storage space. As Jain says, "Storage is the cheapest part of our cost equation."
Jain said Egnyte is making headway in business due to the service's data redundancy and security features, including HIPAA compliance, as well as its "Datasafe guarantee," in which the company agrees to provide access to all data stored on Egnyte servers for seven days even if the company goes out of business.
Egnyte is not a desktop-to-Web file synchronization tool, but other than that it has a strong feature set for its target market. I experimented a little with the new admin interface and found it fast and simple to use.
There are several products in similar orbits to Egnyte, including, to varying degrees, Mozy, Carbonite, Box.net, and YouSendIt. For its new target market, though, I think this company has zeroed in on a product that works.
Egnyte is a new business groupware application that's rolling out at the Web 2.0 Expo. It's entering a very crowded market--the product is can be put in or near the same buckets as business wikis, groupware apps such as Groove, Sharepoint, and Collanos (review), and pure Web 2.0 apps such as Basecamp--but at its most basic it's a file synchronization engine.
By the way, it's pronounced like "ignite," not like "egg night."
Egnyte views appear as little boxes with lots of options.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Egnyte lets you designate directories, individual files, and e-mail folders for sharing. You can collect several items into a "view" (for collecting resources on a particular project, for instance), and invite people into that view. The files and e-mails that you put in a view are then automatically uploaded to Egnyte via a small client application, and they remain synchronized with their original files on your computer (PC, Mac, or Linux box). When other users work on the files, their changes are synced back to you.
It's reminiscent of Tubes (review), the simple peer-to-peer group file sync product I covered in January. But one big difference between Egnyte and many other personal sync engines (such as FolderShare and BeInSync [review]) is that Egnyte keeps historical versions for all files. That means that if you put a PowerPoint presentation into a view, a colleague modifies it, and you don't like the new version, you can easily find and reuse your older one.
Each file and view also gets its own micro message board, which is useful to discuss resources in the system. The system also shows you how files are related. For example, if there's a document that was sent as part of an e-mail discussion, you can find that discussion. A similarity engine lets you find items related to each other even when they are not directly linked.
Inside a view, you can do a lot (too much) with your files.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The app is free for individuals, with a 1GB storage limit. Since all files on Egnyte are copied to the system's central servers, storage limitations matter. Pure peer-to-peer systems like Collanos don't have this sensitivity. Corporate versions go for $30 a month per user, with 30GB of storage (or $15 a month for 15GB of storage). Those prices are too high; that's $360 a year per user, which is more than a full productivity suite at corporate rates. The company will also sell you software so you can put the data behind your corporate firewall.
Besides price, the other big downside to Egnyte is usability. I got lost more than once when I was experimenting with the product. To take advantage of Egnyte, users will have to spend time learning its concepts and terminology. In the Web 2.0 world, that's no longer acceptable. It needs to be obvious how the service works right away. Yes, synchronization is a tough concept to explain. But that's not our problem, is it?
This is an interesting tool but it needs to be made more accessible, in more ways than one.
- prev
- 1
- next
