Features: SaaS products you should know about

STORAGE

How soon will the file server move to the cloud? Probably not as quickly as other applications, as many file servers contain hundreds of useless files that a business rarely 

looks at. There is little advantage to putting them in the cloud until the server dies and forces some action. But the 20 percent of files which

a business views, edits and creates every day are prime data for a cloud service. The ability to access them from any location means SMB owners don’t need to head into the office on the weekend to check a document or find a phone number.

Box

Box (formerly Box.net) has aspirations to compete with SharePoint Online. Box syncs files to the desktop like DropBox for offline access but has more controls for access and permission settings.

Box burnishes its collaboration credentials with online workspaces, which makes an internal folder public so it can be shared with suppliers and customers, for example. Users can post comments, add basic tasks and track file versions.

Box is integrated with Google Apps, Salesforce.com and NetSuite and could be a good companion sell for a business that prefers the Box interface and centralised document management.

Sharefile and Dropbox

Dropbox came under some heavy fire recently for claiming to encrypt customers’ data so that it couldn’t be read by Dropbox administrators when in fact it wasn’t encrypted. It didn’t help that the service already had a reputation as being more consumer than business oriented. This hasn’t stopped small businesses adopting Dropbox as an easier way to share files.

Sharefile is considered a more corporate friendly alternative for, well, sharing files. The vendor has three million users and has customised its online storage for several industries.

ShareFile’s main purpose is to send large or sensitive files without using FTP or courier services. It lets businesses use their own logos on the site interface for a more professional look.

Rackspace cloud drive and Amazon cloud drive You would think that these two would have come up with a different name. Cloud Drives including Microsoft’s Sky Drive are destined to replace smaller sized external hard drives. Maybe not the family videos shot in high- definition, but a small business or sole trader that takes an external drive home from the office with the day’s backup might look at something like this.

The obvious comparison is that a cloud drive is backed up within Amazon or Rackspace’s own highly redundant infrastructure.

If you drop that external drive on the way to the car your data might not be so lucky.

SECURITY

Security in the cloud is highly competitive and vendors seem to be fighting against a commoditisation trend. This has not been helped by Google and Microsoft, which give away top-notch security as part of their productivity suites (Google’s Postini and Microsoft’s Forefront, respectively).

Symantec.cloud, trend micro and Websense SaaS security is divided into three main camps. End-point protection, which uses an agent to enforce security policies but

is managed from a web-based console; web monitoring, which stops users from visiting unsafe or unapproved websites; and data loss prevention, or DLP, which attempts to stop corporate secrets from being emailed out from the corporate intranet.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

Business intelligence (BI) analysis is another product that was reserved for larger companies which could afford to buy a server whose job would be to interrogate a database server to build analytical reports. Cloud-based BI tools can do the same task after they have been configured properly, and without the cost or delay of setting up a purpose-built server.

MyDials, Yellowfin

These two competitors use interactive dashboards to display critical business information in easy-to-read ways. Process flow, productivity, product capability, revenue – pick a metric that best describes the health of your customer’s business.

One of the biggest issues with selling BI tools is that you need to have a very quick implementation process to set up a demonstration, otherwise the cost of sale becomes too great. Consequently, the SMB market is relatively untouched when it comes to selling business intelligence services, so there is potential for a keen reseller.