We’re in the cloud! After a recent search for an on-line service for a collaboration, file storage, and file distribution tool, we discovered digitalbucket.net. It’s completely intuitive to use – we were set up in a couple of minutes.
Among the many ways we’re using the service is to store various versions of ACT! software as “published” files. Distributing these huge (350 +/- MB) files has alway been a challenge, as we often need to distribute installation files to clients in remote locations, and using digitalbucket.net, we can send a link to any customer who needs a hotfix, upgrade, or whatever and they download directly from the site.
We used this for an 80 user ACT! 2009 install recently with users located all around the country; it made it very easy for each user to download the full installer prior to us completing the remote installation. We posted the install log for the client’s project manager to access at the end of each day, which helped our communications tremendously.
We are also storing internal templates, graphics, and other files that we need to share among our staff as well. Different access levels can be set for different users, file access can be set to expire, and there is a virtual drive feature that lets you drag and drop files to folders on the virtual drive without being logged into the site.
There are individual, business, and enterprise versions. We’re getting all the features we need at the business level for $200 a year, and that provides us with 10 subaccounts with more storage and bandwidth than we’ll ever need. Uploads and downloads are very fast.
We even have our internal file transfer folder set up as an RSS feed in Google, so when one of the staff posts a file another staff member needs, it pops right up in the iGoogle page. Sweet. Try it for free for two weeks – I can’t say enough good about it!