YouSendIt Adds SharePoint Collaboration Tool

YouSendIt (YSI) last week launched its newest feature, Workstream, which is a customisable file management and sharing feature that gives businesses a way to transfer files among their own employees and also sharing them with partners, vendors and customers outside the company.

YSI, which started out in 2004 as an alternative-to-email cloud service for sending and receiving large files, has graduated to a whole new business level. It is now being used in 98 percent of the Fortune 500 companies because it has morphed into a full-service enterprise service for doing file storage, file transfers, file syncing, digital signing, and other content-collaboration services.

Cross-platform

Workstream runs on virtually all the mainstream platforms, including Windows and Mac OS X desktops, Android phones and tablets, iPhones, and iPads.

Most importantly for business, Workstream integrates directly with Microsoft SharePoint, Active Directory, and Outlook.

Such a connection with SharePoint – the world’s most-utilised collaboration software – is important because it enables users to share content across departments without needing an intermediary web portal, which can be problematic with regard to firewalls and others security tools.

Thanks to YSI, collaboration projects can be done – say, for partners or one-time customer needs – without the user having to add the outsiders to the corporate SharePoint deployment, which can be a time-consuming, even security-threatening, exercise.

Since more and more enterprise workers are bringing work home, Workstream solves the security issue of moving documents across varying platforms and devices. Unlike PDFs, Workstream emables a user to control read/write permissions on documents and prevents final versions of documents from being overwritten.

34 million users

Although it has gone corporate, YSI maintains its business model of 2GB free accounts, YouSendIt CMO Tony Nemelka told eWEEK.

“We had 34 million unique users during the past year, and they shared more than 100 million files,” Nemelka said. “We’re growing into new lines of business, but we’re not forgetting our roots.”

Freely downloadable custom YSI applications are available for the iOS and Android devices at their respective appstores.

Pricing for the enterprise versions of YSI are as follows: $12 (£8) per user/month up to $30 per user/month, depending upon the options selected.

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