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Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Dan Moshe
April-May 2015

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Collaboration File-sharing services have come a long way, to benefit of users

If you’ve collaborated on documents with co-workers in the last few years, you know that file-sharing has come a long way.  Forget e-mailing documents back and forth.

Today’s top cloud file-sharing platforms—Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive—allow users to access and make changes to their work from anywhere in the world.

While the platforms may all seem to perform the same functions, a closer look will help you discern which of the cloud file-sharing services is the best fit for your business.

 

Sorting options

 

Dropbox is a dream for users of large files, graphics, or video. Going “serverless” is possible with Dropbox’s ability to handle files 1GB and up. A printing company, for example, works with Adobe products and shares diverse and large types of files. Sharing and synchronizing these files easily is crucial to working efficiently.

The downside of Dropbox? It’s not mobile-friendly. The Dropbox mobile app will allow you to preview a document, but not edit via smartphone or tablet. Therefore, this platform will likely keep you tethered to your desktop.

Google Drive and OneDrive fulfill the needs of users who share files 250 MB or less among co-workers. If you’re mainly storing photos and Word documents, for example, Google Drive and One Drive are your best bets. Subtle differences make one better than the other, depending on the users.

Google Drive is a perfect fit for users already heavily in the Google ecosystem. If you’re already hooked on Gmail or Google Calendar, you might be the perfect candidate for Google Drive. No need to sign in twice—Google remembers your name and password and allows you to move freely about Google Country.

Google Drive pioneered live collaboration on documents, and makes the experience an easy one. You can move between desktop and mobile to edit or view documents. Even with Microsoft Office integration, file-sharing is seamless. Editing on-the-go from your mobile device is as simple as it is at your desk.

OneDrive may be a little late to the party, but it has finally caught up with Google Drive when it comes to functionality. The platform has advanced a lot even from where it was six months ago. If you’re already using Office 365, you love Word and Excel, or your tablet is the Microsoft Surface, using OneDrive is a no-brainer.

You want an application that feels familiar, and your technology tendencies gravitate toward a more “vanilla” experience. Why complicate things?

Microsoft Office integrates with OneDrive so you can edit documents seamlessly, and it works on all your devices. You can collaborate with others in real time with the familiarity of the Office interface.

Dropbox, Google Drive and One Drive each offers a free personal account. Try them all out and see what fits your needs best, or work with a tech service provider to evaluate which platforms would best fit your work style. You can upgrade to bigger storage offerings after your evaluation.

Even when upgrading storage size, Google Drive is free for nonprofits and education sectors, so Tech Guru always recommends Google Drive over OneDrive to nonprofit and education clients. For individuals in for-profit business, OneDrive scales up nicely from individual use to a good-sized small business.

Most users will find some combination of these three platforms can cover their needs. Even within one company, sometimes the same platform isn’t right for all departments.

The whole team might use One Drive, while an individual department works better with Dropbox. At Tech Guru, we use a combination of Dropbox and Google Drive, but we are moving to primarily Google Drive.

 

All about security

 

If you’re new to the cloud, you may have reservations about the security of your company’s information as it swims around mysteriously “out there.”

Information stored on cloud file-sharing platforms contains different levels of encryption. Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive all encrypt data when it’s leaving your computer, in transit. The platforms differ in how they encrypt data while your computer is at rest.

Dropbox offers an add-on service called SooKasa to prevent data being accessible from a computer at rest. Computers with Windows 8.1 or Mac OSX have this level of built-in encryption capabilities.

Google Drive and OneDrive do allow data to be accessible while the computer is at rest. Encryption solutions like BitLocker, FileVault will do the trick to protect data locally.

Business owners are surprised to hear that most breaches of secure data come from within the company, whether intentional or not. Tech Guru has a few suggestions for how to keep your company’s most private information secure:

Communicate security concerns to your employees who will take advantage of cloud file-sharing and access documents on personal devices such as smartphones, tablets and home computers. Let them know that private company information could be accessed by outside individuals if devices were to be lost or stolen.

Enforce password use on personal mobile devices. Once employees understand the risks involved in using their smartphones, tablets, and laptops for work purposes, they won’t mind the extra step. Two-factor authentication is the highest level of mobile device security, requiring not only a set password, but an access code sent at the time of sign-in as well.

Increase physical security in your office space. Keep unauthorized persons away from your workplace computers by using key fobs on doors, heavy-duty security bolts and security cameras. Your company data is one of your biggest assets, and should be protected as you would a physical asset.

Insure against any losses you can’t mitigate with your insurance provider. In the case of a data breach, you will navigate the crisis more easily with the full protection of a policy.

Your company will experience leaps and bounds in efficiency with a file-sharing system that’s the right fit. Work with your IT department or managed services provider to find the platform that is best for your business.

Contact: Dan Moshe is founder of Tech Guru in Minneapolis: 612.235.4895; dmoshe@techguruit.com; www.techguruit.com