Every once in a while I receive the question, “Why should I use ShareFile if I already got OneDrive for Business”.
Out of a natural habit, I always respond “It depends”. That’s perhaps the most common answer in IT and also the safest one, at least for the IT pro. Nevertheless, I want to address this question and its dependencies in this blog post.
Why do we need Content Collaboration tools in the first place?
First of all, why do people ask this question? Well, people need tools to safely synchronize data across their variety of devices and perhaps more importantly, they need to collaborate with each other. Sharing data with content collaboration tools are indispensable. Working, simultaneously, on the same document is a clear example of driving productivity and meeting user expectations on how we, as human beings, like to digitally collaborate when it comes to data. The need for secure content collaboration tools is a fact. At first, we started to use synchronization tools in our private lives, very convenient with all our devices. Later on, we started to share them with relatives and friends. All these consumer style solutions really helped us and made our lives easy. A lot of us, myself included, started thinking “Why don’t we use these solutions at the office?”. And so, we did. A great example of Consumerization of IT, as we introduced consumer solutions (e.g. Dropbox, OneDrive, WeTransfer) into the enterprise world. Organizations recognized these shadow IT initiatives and addressed the challenges. Enterprise File Sync and Share solutions (e.g. Citrix ShareFile, Box, Egnyte) were implemented.