Selecting the Best Content Collaboration Platforms for Your Organization

WHY DO YOU NEED CLOUD STORAGE?

As companies move forward in this mobile and cloud-first world, where associates store their files is a major obstacle to progressing towards that future.
Content Collaboration Platforms (CCP), formally referred to as “Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS)”, are integrated software platforms designed to allow teams to collaboratively create, store, and share content internally or externally.
As defined by Gartner, the core functionalities include:
• Mobile access to content repositories
• File sync across devices and cloud repositories
• File sharing with people and applications, inside or outside an organization
• Team collaboration, with dedicated folders
• A content repository. This can be cloud-based or on-premises, native to the CCP platform or based on other file servers or repositories.

Selecting the right solutions for your organization can be a challenge. Finding the right solution to store your organization’s data assets could prove even more daunting. With the rise of content collaboration platforms, there are many options to choose from which doesn’t help the decision-making process. Gartner and other review sites rate the solutions in attempt to make it easier for organizations to select the product that will work best for their business.

Which Content Collaboration Platforms are Best for My Business?

At TecFac, we have worked with several Content Collaboration Platforms from Dropbox to OneDrive and ShareFile to Egnyte. Using our experience with these various solutions, we hope to give you some insight into making the right decision for your company.

There are a few questions that should be answered as you are defining your data storage requirements:

1. How much data do you need to store?
   Each solution offers different packages that each come with a certain amount of allotted storage. You will need to know how much data you currently have and the rate at which you expect it to grow to determine which package to select.
2. What type of accessibility do you require?
   Each solution offers multiple ways for accessing the data – web, mobile, desktop sync, mapped drive, and other desktop applications. Based on the demographics of your associates and their needs for file access, you will need to determine if methods of access that the solution provides will meet your needs.
3. What level of security and control will you need?
   Each solution provides different ways to manage security and maintain positive control over the data within the platform. You will need to have a good understanding of your organizational structure and the security needs within that to determine which solution provides the features you will need to manage the security.
4. What are your sharing needs?
   Each solution offers various ways of sharing data internally and externally. You will need to know if your organization has a need for sharing information with 3rd party entities and how they prefer to share information to determine what type of external sharing will work best.

In our next blog, we will evaluate the results of us using the different solutions that are most commonly deployed to organizations and share what we think is the best option. 

If you’d like to learn more about content collaboration platforms, contact the experts at TecFac and schedule a consultation so we can help select a product and customize an implementation plan that fits your business.