In February 2013 Johan Hammerstrom hosted a webinar on File Sharing in the Cloud. No solution has emerged as the killer FS in the Cloud solution just yet. Not in the way that hosted Exchange and Google Apps have come to dominate Email in the Cloud.
It is all the more surprising when you consider the many benefits that come from storing data in a cloud-based environment, along with the many limitations of a traditional file system.
Johan polled the 60+ participants of the webinar about the challenges they faced with their current file system and over 80% of the responses indicated that “Difficulties Remotely Accessing Files” was by far the most common, almost universal, challenge.
Recent revolutions in mobile and cloud have helped to create a working environment in which employees assume and expect that they can access documents and files from any location. Unfortunately, the traditional file server is not geared to provide this level of access. Using a VPN or Remote Desktop connection is often cumbersome. So the industry waits for the right solution to emerge.