How SugarSync Makes Remote Team Collaboration More Efficient

How SugarSync Makes Remote Team Collaboration More Efficient — Featuring Real-Time Updates of Shared Files Across All of Your Devices

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TL;DR

Cloud back­up and sync is a fun­da­men­tal need of multi-device pro­fes­sion­als and teams. Files need to be acces­si­ble any­where, any time, and from any device. Teams need a ser­vice like SugarSync to eas­i­ly share and col­lab­o­rate on doc­u­ments with instant syn­chro­niza­tion of changes to all mem­bers, while team leads need accu­rate over­sight and gran­u­lar con­trol over per­mis­sions and what files syn­chro­nize to what devices. Busy teams with remote work­ers, con­trac­tors, and temps need the abil­i­ty to instant­ly autho­rize and deau­tho­rize users on the com­pa­ny account, and to instant­ly reclaim and remove com­pa­ny dig­i­tal assets from for­mer team mem­bers. With an array of business-class ser­vices for indi­vid­u­als and teams, SugarSync sat­is­fies all of these needs while also ensur­ing data secu­ri­ty with anti-hacking tech­nol­o­gy and bank-level encryption.[/su_note]

There are many rea­sons a busi­ness might need to share dig­i­tal assets among team mem­bers and with out­side enti­ties. Email, FTP, shared net­work dri­ves, and remov­able media are all anti­quat­ed con­tent dis­sem­i­na­tion meth­ods that actu­al­ly slow down busi­ness. The pace of mod­ern busi­ness requires the abil­i­ty to instant­ly share the lat­est ver­sion of any file with any­one, and to just as swift­ly unshare any file. Cloud-based file syn­chro­niza­tion and shar­ing, but­tressed by the con­trol to take back shared files, is essen­tial to pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and asset control.

At no point was it more plain­ly evi­dent to me how slow even email doc­u­ment dis­tri­b­u­tion had become than when my friend relat­ed to me his sto­ry of how, with­out gen­uine­ly instant doc­u­ment syn­chro­niza­tion, a sin­gle image would have com­mit­ted his client to a $2 mil­lion mistake.

My friend is a con­sul­tant to a com­pa­ny whose name, for con­fi­den­tial­i­ty rea­sons, I can’t dis­close. We’ll call the com­pa­ny Acme POS Systems.

Acme POS Systems man­u­fac­tures point-of-sale sys­tems for a range of nation­al retail, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, and food and bev­er­age ser­vice chains. This past Spring, Acme POS Systems launched the most sig­nif­i­cant update to its sys­tems in three years. Every aspect of their systems—31 prod­ucts in total across all lines—was refined through numer­ous ren­di­tions, exten­sive user expe­ri­ence research, and focus group test­ing. These new ver­sions sped and eased point of sale oper­a­tion through more than three dozen alter­ations and refine­ments to the soft­ware func­tion­al­i­ty, user inter­face, and access hard­ware. The new ver­sion rep­re­sent­ed a sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment of work­hours and cap­i­tal, with every employee—and a few con­sul­tants like myself—working until the final hours before the day of the new ver­sion launch. That launch would occur not only just through the usu­al chan­nels of social media, blog, and press releas­es, but also live before the top exec­u­tives in all of hos­pi­tal­i­ty at an indus­try convention.

So focused on ensur­ing every detailed was tend­ed to that, of course, one detail was left unfixed. To get a jump on ready­ing for launch day, doc­u­men­ta­tion writ­ing and pre­sen­ta­tion cre­ation began before the POS sys­tem user inter­faces had reached their final ver­sions. Out of dozens of screen­shots spread across pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als, tuto­ri­als, sales sheets, and oth­er doc­u­men­ta­tion, a sin­gle old screen­shot slipped through with­out an update. That screen­shot showed a but­ton that had been removed from the final ver­sion of the product—as had the func­tion accessed by that button.

The old screen­shot went unno­ticed until the company’s Vice President of Sales was prepar­ing to take the stage to present Acme POS Systems’ new prod­ucts at the convention.

The devel­op­ment team at Acme lat­er esti­mat­ed that it would have cost just under $2 mil­lion to restore and make func­tion­al that aban­doned fea­ture of their point of touch sys­tems. The sales team, who began receiv­ing multi-million dol­lar orders for the new POS sys­tems before the VP had even con­clud­ed his pre­sen­ta­tion, are con­fi­dent that cus­tomers would have insist­ed on receiv­ing the removed func­tion, even if it didn’t real­ly ben­e­fit them, sim­ply because they had seen it in the presentation.

Back at the office, the doc­u­men­ta­tion team fran­ti­cal­ly took a new screen­shot. They opened the VP’s PowerPoint pre­sen­ta­tion from the SugarSync-managed fold­er and replaced the old screen­shot on a mas­ter slide that caused the image to appear on eleven slides. The image updat­ed, the team pressed CTRL+S to save the pre­sen­ta­tion. Ten sec­onds lat­er and two thou­sand miles apart, the VP opened the updat­ed PowerPoint file to begin his pre­sen­ta­tion com­plete­ly unaware that any­thing had changed from when he’d last opened it dur­ing that morning’s rehearsal.

Versatile Cloud Storage Gives Businesses Control Over Productivity

Fundamentally, SugarSync is a cloud back­up and file syn­chro­niza­tion ser­vice. It can safe­ly store all of your most impor­tant files in the cloud, ready for restora­tion in the event of a data loss or to eas­i­ly migrate your files from your old com­put­er to your new one. Similarly, it keeps your home and office com­put­ers in sync so you nev­er have to feel the frus­tra­tion of leav­ing an impor­tant file at the office, or con­verse­ly, leav­ing the lat­est ver­sion of your pre­sen­ta­tion at home. These are the most basic func­tions of SugarSync, and it does them exceed­ing­ly well. They aren’t all it does.

Backing up files to the cloud means the lat­est ver­sion of your files — and sev­er­al pre­vi­ous ver­sions — exist in the cloud, ready for access from all of your devices, not just your home and office com­put­ers. In a meet­ing with your iPad and need the lat­est spread­sheet from your desk­top or that pre­sen­ta­tion you pol­ished off last night while watch­ing “The Tonight Show”? Easy. Open the SugarSync iOS app and you’ll have instant access to all your files, even if the com­put­er you last edit­ed them on is turned off. It’s the same on your phone. Need those con­cert tick­ets on your Galaxy S phone? They’re in your SugarSync Android app. You can even mark some files to always be down­loaded, ready to go to each device.

What if your col­league needs your spread­sheet or Jimmy Fallon-inspired pre­sen­ta­tion at a moment’s notice? Will you have to access the right file in SugarSync, down­load it, and then email it to your col­league? No. Just share the file — or entire fold­ers — right from the SugarSync app on any device — mobile, lap­top, or desktop.

Not only can you share doc­u­ments to col­leagues for view­ing, you can also make them co-editors, enabling col­lab­o­ra­tion on your doc­u­ments. Each file can have dif­fer­ent per­mis­sions, as can each per­son with whom you’ve shared the file. Some team mem­bers can be edi­tors, some mere­ly view­ers. Any mod­i­fi­ca­tions by any team mem­ber with edit per­mis­sions are instant­ly reflect­ed in all col­lab­o­ra­tors’ copies via SugarSync’s rapid syn­chro­niza­tion. The ser­vice even keeps the last five ver­sions of a file, pro­vid­ing a clear path of account­abil­i­ty and revi­sion back­track­ing. When it comes time to final­ize a doc­u­ment, revok­ing edit per­mis­sions or unshar­ing entire­ly are just as sim­ple as it was to share the file.

SugarSync inspires and enables pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. For indi­vid­ual pro­fes­sion­als, it does that through cloud back­up, sync, and instant access to their files any­where on any device. Though those fea­tures are impor­tant to teams, it’s SugarSync’s pow­er to con­nect local and remote team mem­bers for col­lab­o­ra­tion that is the biggest boost to productivity.

256-Bit Encryption Keeps Data Secure and Provides Peace of Mind

Often the first and most impor­tant ques­tion any­one asks about a cloud sync and back­up solu­tion, even before, “What can I sync and with whom?” is “How safe is my data?” The answer to that ques­tion is often the decid­ing fac­tor in many cus­tomers’ minds. It’s actu­al­ly a two-fold ques­tion. Inquiring about data safe­ty means ask­ing how secure and pri­vate files remain in the cloud and dur­ing tran­sit. It also means ask­ing about the integri­ty of stored files should their orig­i­nals be destroyed in a data loss such as the cor­rup­tion of a sin­gle file or a hard dri­ve fail­ure that results in thou­sands of lost files.

SugarSync includes both file secu­ri­ty and backup.

Utilizing bank-level 256-bit AES encryp­tion, your files in the cloud are safe. Getting them there has always been the risky part, with man-in-the-middle (MiM) attacks a con­stant threat, par­tic­u­lar­ly with remote or trav­el­ing employ­ees who might access shared work files over inse­cure WiFi net­works. Fortunately, SugarSync pre­vents MiM attacks, even on the most open cof­fee shop or air­port WiFi, with secure upload­ing and down­load­ing. Rather than trans­fer­ring files through open pro­to­cols like HTTP, the SugarSync client installed on your com­put­er com­mu­ni­cates secure­ly with the SugarSync servers through a hand­shake process that ver­i­fies the iden­ti­ty of both and pre­vents data inter­cep­tion by man-in-the-middle devices. Bidirectional sync, upload and down­load, uses indus­try stan­dard TLS (SSL 3.3) encryp­tion to secure files and data.

Once files are secure­ly stored in the cloud, the oth­er half of data safe­ty can be addressed. Files synced to SugarSync are, by def­i­n­i­tion, backed up. Should their orig­i­nals ever become cor­rupt­ed or lost, you can eas­i­ly down­load replace­ments from SugarSync – either indi­vid­ual files or entire fold­ers. In the event of a full hard dri­ve or com­put­er fail­ure, it only takes installing and log­ging into the SugarSync client to sync your entire cloud back­up to the new dri­ve or computer.

File ver­sion­ing is a native part of SugarSync, too. Automatic back­ups of the pre­vi­ous five ver­sions of your files, and a sim­ple means of view­ing and restor­ing those ver­sions, offer a safe­ty net against cor­rupt­ed files that make it through syn­chro­niza­tion to the cloud as well as col­lab­o­ra­tors mak­ing unwant­ed changes. In a bril­liant stroke of cus­tomer ser­vice, SugarSync doesn’t even count the pre­vi­ous ver­sion back­ups against your stor­age lim­it. Only the size of the most recent ver­sion is count­ed. For exam­ple, your five ver­sions of a 1 GB file, though total­ing 5 GB if saved to your com­put­er, only count on SugarSync as 1 GB.

Plans are Available to Fit the Needs of Individuals or Businesses

SugarSync makes sense for both per­son­al and team use, and offers pric­ing that also makes sense.

Individual plans offer 100, 250, and 500 giga­bytes of cloud stor­age, plus business-level file ver­sion­ing, and unlim­it­ed upload and down­load trans­fers. Pricing starts at $7.49 per month for the 100 GB plan and goes through $18.95 per month for the 500 GB plan. The most pop­u­lar plan, accord­ing to SugarSync, is the mid-range 250 GB stor­age plan at only $9.99 per month. To help put those num­bers in con­text, 100 GB of stor­age is rough­ly equiv­a­lent to 3,200 pho­tos, 10,000 PDF files, 220,000 Excel spread­sheets, or 500,000 Word documents.

Businesses that want file syn­chro­niza­tion, back­up, and ver­sion­ing for their team mem­bers get even more stor­age and advanced fea­tures. One to nine users per month cost as lit­tle as $14.78 per user and include 1,000 GB of cloud stor­age, file ver­sion­ing, and unlim­it­ed upload and down­load trans­fers. Even greater per-user dis­counts are avail­able for teams with 10 or more con­cur­rent users.

All busi­ness accounts include live tele­phone sup­port, the abil­i­ty to remote­ly wipe all SugarSync-managed files from team mem­ber or con­trac­tor com­put­ers, and a pow­er­ful admin­is­tra­tive con­trol pan­el. Within the admin­is­tra­tive con­trol pan­el, team man­agers can eas­i­ly con­trol not only what syncs with whom and with what per­mis­sions, but also adjust indi­vid­ual user stor­age capac­i­ty allo­ca­tion and acti­vate and deac­ti­vate seats on the fly. Should one team mem­ber be out sick or on vaca­tion, that user can be tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed, free­ing up a seat, and then a fill-in employ­ee or con­trac­tor can be tem­porar­i­ly added as a SugarSync user with access to the absent employee’s files. When the orig­i­nal employ­ee comes back, his or her access can be instant­ly restored, while the contractor’s access can be deac­ti­vat­ed and all shared files instant­ly wiped away.

Sharing indi­vid­ual files doesn’t even require the recip­i­ent to have a SugarSync account. Each file and fold­er can be shared with a pub­lic down­load link.

Between the doc­u­ment or fold­er own­er, with a full seat license, and occa­sion­al recip­i­ents who don’t’ even need a SugarSync account is anoth­er use­ful inter­me­di­ary step. Sharing a fold­er to a ven­dor, part­ner, or free­lancer who doesn’t need to con­tribute doc­u­ments into the fold­er, but who needs access to view and down­load the files with­in, is the domain of the Shared Folder Plan. The free Shared Folder Plan enables pri­vate shar­ing of a fold­er to those with­out a paid SugarSync account. Recipients of your shared fold­er link who don’t already have a SugarSync account can pur­chase one or sim­ply reg­is­ter free of charge for the Shared Folder Plan.

SugarSync’s Simplicity of Use Makes it a Standout Among Cloud Options

Digital files can no longer be stuck on a sin­gle device because mod­ern pro­fes­sion­als don’t use just one device. Freelancer, team mem­ber, or man­ag­er, you and your col­lab­o­ra­tors need your files here, there, and every­where. You need to view and work on the same files on your desk com­put­er, on your lap­top while trav­el­ing and pre­sent­ing, on your iPad on the sub­way, and on your phone at din­ner and every­where, and you need the lat­est changes to those files instant­ly prop­a­gat­ed to every device on which you might need them. You may nev­er find your­self sec­onds away from a $2 mil­lion image ver­sion mis­take like Acme POS Systems, but is a lack of access to the lat­est ver­sion of a file ide­al in any scenario?

The world no longer accepts “I left the file at home” as an excuse — and you don’t want to be the per­son who has to mum­ble that excuse to a client, investor, part­ner, or man­ag­er. SugarSync keeps your files safe from cat­a­stro­phe, puts them with­in your reach from any device, and keeps them in sync when work­ing with col­lab­o­ra­tors in the same office and a dif­fer­ent coun­try. All with a max­i­mum of secu­ri­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and oversight.