Cloud services are expected to grow more than 17% by 2016. When your company is ready to move more of their processes to the cloud, it is important to pick a solution that properly fits your business. The right cloud services will help you focus on your core business. After all, isn’t that where your attention should be?

Which Cloud Services Do You Need?

In the beginning, you should create a high-level list of all of your business processes. You can start with items like email, payroll, sharing files with clients, AP, AR, etc. Once you have your list of business processes, you can start evaluating which ones can be moved to the cloud.

Next, you will need to do some research to determine which cloud service providers meet your needs. For instance, you may need one for file sharing and another for payroll. Make sure that you pick services to match your business, not the other way around.

“Cloud services present an opportunity for companies to focus on their core competencies. Most business processes are necessary overhead, but offloading the management and maintenance of those processes frees resources to work on what differentiates a business,” states Andrew Loe, our  Development Lead here at Onehub. “At the same time, IT managers making the decision of what to parts of their process to offload need to be pragmatic and choose the right cloud solutions that are inline with their business objectives.”

Once you have an initial list of service providers, use the questions below to pick the best ones for your needs.

Is the Provider’s Technology Secure?

Does the cloud provider offer a private cloud solution that is only accessible to specified organizations and/or people? Some companies may need the increased security of a private cloud. If this is a factor, make sure the provider has a private cloud solution when doing your research. Onehub makes the security of its customer’s files and data a top priority. We promise and deliver the highest level of security across the millions of files residing in our systems.

Is the Service Easy to Use?

Let’s say you’re selecting a file sharing provider. Is it easy to upload the files to their system? Once the files are uploaded, can you easily set the permissions so that only the right people can access the files? Is it easy to share the files with your customers and vendors? With Onehub, files can be added with a simple drag-and-drop onto the webpage. Onehub offers folder and file user permissions to ensure that you have control over what files are being shared with who, at all times.

Can They Meet Your Deadline?

The service provider can have a great product, but if they can’t meet your implementation deadline it can be a deal breaker. This is an important question to ask early on to make sure they can have their service ready on time. Onehub can be ready to use in a matter of minutes, so we can meet any implementation deadline.

Do they have Incredible Customer Service?

Does the provider have incredible customer service? Will they give you two or three current customers to call for references? If so, some good questions to ask might be:

• How quickly does customer service return calls?
• Is their staff knowledgeable?
• What is their availability?
  •  If your company has different hours of operation, are you able to wait until they are open for business?
• How long do you have to wait on the phone before a person helps you?

At Onehub, we take great pride in providing incredible customer service. Our knowledgeable staff is waiting to take your call. Just give us a ring at 877-644-7774.

Is There Performance Rate Inline with Your Needs?

Sure, any cloud service provider can say they have great performance, but how do they measure it? More importantly, how do they relate performance to overall customer satisfaction? At Onehub, our development team is constantly monitoring application performance to ensure stellar access every time you access your Onehub account.

How reliable is their service? What happens in the case of a natural disaster or power outage?  Do they have multiple internet connections for redundancy?  At Onehub, our data center is ready to provide reliable service. You can access your files with confidence from anywhere in the world, anytime you need, from multiple devices.

Conclusion

Picking what specific cloud solutions to choose for your company requires proper planning. Making a high-level list of business processes is a great way to start. This way when you look at services, you can match them up to your processes. Once you have this information, researching the right cloud service providers and asking the right questions becomes an easier process.

As you all know, Onehub is an online file sharing solution that helps businesses securely share and control files in the cloud. There are other companies that do this type of thing too. You may have heard of at least one….box, something? Well, we recently did a full on review of the big players in our space and found some pretty interesting things.

We found that most document sharing solutions do similar things and all do them pretty well. We all securely store big data files, let you share folders and files with other people, access your files from multiple devices, and most are pretty easy to set up and use.

The biggest difference we found was around permissions settings. It seems that online file sharing solutions differ widely when it comes to features within the platform that enable users to control what files are shared and with whom. Check it out:

Onehub doesn’t just help users share folders or files. Unlike other file sharing solutions, we enable users to set specific access and edit permissions that provide confident control of their information.

These granular permissions include:

•   Folder and file sharing based on role, task, and many other dimensions, ensuring your data stays private
•   Powerful document rights management, user agreements and watermarking to prevent misuse
• Sophisticated tracking and admin notification that report every event from views and downloads to edits and comments

Of course, there are many other differences between Onehub and the other online file sharing solutions—including our great UI, competitive pricing, the ability to customize Onehub for your brand, and other key items—but we believe one of the biggest is that with Onehub you can rest assured that your file sharing will be on your terms.

Keep up to date with cloud technology insights and laughs by following us on Twitter @Onehub.

We are happy to announce the availability of Onehub for the iPad. Bring all of your files with you with secure access to all of your workspaces, folders and files.

Today’s mobile professionals demand secure access to their files from all the devices they use. With Onehub’s iPhone and new iPad apps, no matter which device is being used, customers are able to work effectively—whether at home, in the office or on the go. 

Access Workspaces and view activity.

Access files from anywhere.

The iPad’s use in business is rising as more employees adopt a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) approach to the technology they use in the workplace. In fact, a new survey conducted by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) finds that 21% of new iPad owners say that they’ll be using their new slate for business. And it’s not just BYOD—as of April 2012, 94% of Fortune 500 companies were experimenting with or actively deploying the iPad.

Onehub for iPad addresses important business requirements for file sharing including:

• Security. Object-level security and role-based permissions ensure data stays private, keeping businesses in compliance with information security requirements
• Productivity. Onehub’s powerful software makes it simple to share, edit and comment on documents, and interact with colleagues across files and workspaces
• Anywhere, updated access. Automatic file/folder sync across devices–desktop, mobile, and tablet–ensuring documents are always up-to-date

Current Onehub customers can download the free Onehub for iPad application through the Apple iTunes App Store. New customers can sign up for a 14-day free trial of the Onehub solution, making enterprise content management and file sharing easy and secure across desktop, iPhone and iPad.

Uploading and sharing confidential information can be scary. What if the information is leaked? How do I prevent people from downloading and distributing confidential documents? These are all important questions to consider when sharing confidential documents. Today we are announcing a new Document Watermark feature to give you more control over your information and provide a way to track documents after they are downloaded.

Document Watermarks automatically insert a Watermark with the user’s email, date and the word Confidential when a user views the document online or downloads. If a user has download permission, the user will download a protected PDF that includes the Watermark. Administrators and Moderators will still have access to the original documents.

Viewing Documents Online

When viewing documents in a Workspace with Watermarks enabled, the file preview automatically displays a watermark on every page.

Downloading Documents

When downloading documents, the user gets a protected PDF with the watermark instead of the original file. Administrators and Moderators in the Workspace can download the original file without a watermark.

How do I enable Watermarks?

To enable Watermarks in your Workspace, click the Settings icon in the top right next to the Workspace name. Choose the Security area, and click Enable Document Watermarks.

The Document Watermark feature is available starting today on the Team and Enterprise Edition plans. Learn more about Document Watermarks on our Help site.

Onehub Workspaces uses a role-based permission system to control access to files and information. The role is set when the user is invited and can be changed at any time by an Administrator or Moderator. One of the challenges with role-based permissions, is viewing the information you are sharing as a different role. This is now easy in Workspaces with the new View Workspaces As feature.

How it Works

When sharing a Workspace, folder or file, you select the role of the user you are inviting. Next to the role drop-down are two icons, Help and View As.

When you select View As, your view is replaced using the permissions of the role you selected. The top Onehub bar is replaced with a Preview Bar. To return to the normal view, click the X icon in the top right to exit preview mode.

Available Roles

Note: All roles inherit the permissions of the roles below them.

• Administrator. Can edit the Workspace pages, modify the logo and colors, and modify the Workspace security settings.
• Moderator. Can upload, edit and delete any file or folder. Can invite other users to the Workspace, invite users to a file and folder, create secure links, and edit all comments in the Workspace.
• Creator. Can view previews, print, and download files. Can upload files to a folder or Workspace and delete folders and files they created. Can view and add comments to files, folders and messages. Can post Messages to a Workspace.
• Downloader. Can view previews, print and download files. Cannot view or add comments to items.
• Printer. Can view previews and print but cannot download files. Cannot view or add comments to items.
• Viewer. Can view previews of files but cannot print or download files. Cannot view or add comments to items.

Have Questions? You can read more about role-based permission on the Onehub Help site.

When sharing information your brand should be the focus not ours. With this in mind, we recently updated the Workspace emails to include your branding.

An example of the new branded invitation emails.

Onehub Workspaces sends email for several events including inviting a new users, commenting on an item, posting a new message and daily notification emails. All of these emails now include the color and logo from the Workspace.

An example of the new comment emails.

Note: These changes only apply to users on Workspaces version 2. If you don’t see branded emails, you may be using Workspaces version 1. To learn more about migrating to Workspaces 2, please contact us at [email protected].

We moved! After a several month search, we leased office space in Pioneer Square. The new office is located in an awesome neighborhood that has become the tech hub of Seattle and gives us room to grow for the next few years.

If you are not familiar with Seattle, Pioneer Square is a historic neighborhood in the heart of Seattle. The neighborhood was settled in 1852 and the early buildings were wooden structures. In 1889, the Great Seattle Fire destroyed much of the neighborhood and the wooden buildings were replaced with brick and stone buildings. Our new office is in a historic brick building that was recently renovated.

Our new mailing address:

Onehub Inc.
105 S Main Street, Suite 240
Seattle, WA 98104

Map of the new office:

We are unpacking and settling in to the new space. It is a big change to move from private offices to a large open space. So far, we love it. We will post photos when we are finishing unpacking. For now, here is a quick photo from my phone.

For all paid Workspaces plans, you can purchase additional storage a la carte. Additional storage is sold per GB and the price ranged from $2 – $5 per GB depending on your plan. Today, we are lowering the price for additional storage to $1 per GB on all plans.

If you have purchased additional storage already, you don’t need to do anything to get the lower price. The new price will take affect on your next billing cycle.

View the full price list for Workspaces.

Sharing files online is great. As long as you don’t have to switch to your browser every 5 minutes to manually upload and download files when they change.

Onehub Sync is a new feature for Workspaces that keeps a local copy of all the files and folders stored in the online Workspace. The Onehub Sync client is a lightweight application than runs continually to watch for changes to online and local files. When changes are detected, the client automatically synchronizes the two.

Download Onehub Sync

Why should you try Onehub Sync?

It’s Easy. Onehub Sync only takes a few minutes to setup.
It’s Automatic. Once installed, you work on files in your special Onehub folder and everything is automatically synchronized in the background.
It’s Free. Onehub Sync is free with any paid plan. For free users, you can try Sync free for 30 days.

Benefits of Onehub Sync

Increase Productivity

By seamlessly connecting your computer to the robust collaboration tools offered in Onehub Workspaces you can more productively and efficiently work with people inside and outside your firewall.

Effortless Collaboration

When other members of your workspace use Onehub sync, you’ll automatically receive their changes as well. Everyone in the workspace always has the most up-to-date versions of files.

Work Offline

Access and work on your files even when you’re offline. Any changes you make will be tracked and synced with your workspaces the next time you are online.

Learn more about Onehub Sync.

Once again it is time to visit another conversation with a customer at Onehub. This week I spent some time speaking with Bruce Ricciuti, managing member of Birch Leaf Global. Bruce gave us some insight as to why the customization and flexibility of Onehub created the right file sharing solution for their company. By using Onehub Birch Leaf Global is able to better provide their investors with information in a quick, secure, and professional manner.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): Please start by sharing with us a little bit about your company and what exactly it is you do there.

Bruce Ricciuti (Birch Leaf Global): Birch Leaf Global is a real estate investment company that funds commercial, university, hospital, and institutional projects across the US by finding foreign capital sources. Our company promotes projects with developers by marketing the projects to investors in China, Latin America, India, Brazil, and other foreign countries.  My position at Birch Leaf Global is managing member.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): How did your company hear about Onehub?

Bruce Ricciuti (Birch Leaf Global): Previous to Onehub we were using a competitive product, which we were constantly having problems with. Eventually we decided that we needed to look into another file sharing product. I spent some time researching other solutions and software platforms in the file sharing market and I quickly came to the conclusion that the customization offered by Onehub made it the best option for our company.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): What were some of the problems that you ran into when you were using the other product?

Bruce Ricciuti (Birch Leaf Global): Well with the other product we ran into quite a few problems that sadly, we felt the company was unwilling to address. Our biggest issue was with the product’s notification system. When sending messages to our investors we often send the same message, but we don’t necessarily want those investors to have access to one another. With this particular product we were having problems with sending messages that only allowed the recipient to reply directly to us, and not to everyone who was receiving the email. Having a “reply to all” function that was unable to be turned off caused a couple embarrassing incidents for our company. Ultimately we were looking for a way to create a virtual data room where we could customize whom we sent our information to, the amount of access those individuals had to one another, and also customize the manner in which we received information back from those individuals. Another issue that we were facing with the previous product was that our investors were having difficulties with the basic usability of the product. We were constantly receiving phone calls about log in issues and questions regarding account set up. However since switching to Onehub we have eliminated all of those types of issues.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): And how would you say that your company is using Onehub today?

Bruce Ricciuti (Birch Leaf Global): Well as with any real estate project there is an extreme amount of data and property information being exchanged and reviewed. This is especially so when you have investors that are looking to invest five hundred thousand to one million dollars into a project, which is true for most of the investors that we are working with. Overall we use Onehub to automate the flow of information we send to our investors. Once we qualify an investor, we will send them an invitation to the hub that we have set up for that specific project. Onehub makes it simple for us to give our investors quick and easy access to videos, pictures, site plans, building plans, and legal documents pertaining to the project they are reviewing and considering. In this way, Onehub allows for a type of due diligence that is secure, but that we can also customize to whom we send the information. The best part is the amount of time we save by just having to upload the information once. After the information has been uploaded all we have to do is simply click a button and we can send that information to any interested investor.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): What are some of the major benefits you have found since switching to Onehub?

Bruce Ricciuti (Birch Leaf Global): One of the main benefits has been how easily our investors have adapted to using the product. We are constantly working with individuals from all over the world. In working with different countries the language barrier is of course always going to be a concern, however with Onehub we have yet to run into any problems with clients successfully logging in and accessing the information they wish to review. The way Onehub is set up allows for individuals to catch on quickly and understand how to navigate without any type of tutorial or explanation. Even the novice computer user can just go log in and immediately feel like they know their way around the product. Another thing that we appreciated about Onehub is that you make it so easy-to-use, while maintaining a very professional look and feel to the site at the same time. The professionalism allows us to share the hub directly with our investors without having to do any type of design work on our part. Overall using Onehub was not only a cost effective choice, but it also instantly increased our productivity.

Stephanie Chinn (Onehub): What do your colleagues, and investors say about Onehub?

Bruce Ricciuti (Birch Leaf Global): We have received nothing but positive feedback. The best thing that we have found since switching to Onehub is that we have received absolutely no phone calls regarding questions about the service. Again we understand that when working with investors from all over the world language barriers can be a problem, but with Onehub our overseas investors have been able to easily and quickly access all information. As a company we have no complaints, it is probably one of the best external products that we work with here, the one we are most happy with.