Hello, business persons,

Have you heard of the Drop Dropbox initiative? If not, here is some info for you. Apparently, the Dropbox Board of Directors have appointed the former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as a member of the Dropbox management. In a business sense, the election of this particular person is not a mystery, because of her previous experience of holding the position of a Provost of the Stanford University, board member of companies like Hewlett Packard and Charles Schwab, and former United States Secretary of State. However, users believe that holding a position at the Board of Directors of Dropbox is undeserved and even harmful. Why is that? Because state authorities (former or present) should not have the right to interfere with companies dealing with digital privacy, such as file storage platforms, which are supposedly securely storing our data. The participation of Dr. Condoleeza Rice in the Dropbox management is considered highly disturbing, especially in terms of ethics, since, aside from all of the aforementioned, she is also believed to be one of the architects of the Iraq War. Also, she was one of those who justified the use of interrogation forms of torture during the war. All of the foregoing, mostly for political reasons, undermines the confidence that Dropbox will keep its users' data secure, and fight to preserve it that way. Dropbox users believe her selection is problematic on a number of levels, and question the commitment of Dropbox to freedom of data possession, openness, and ethics, since this company, being a cloud storage platform, literally has access to all of its user's data.

To calm its users, Dropbox announced: “There’s nothing more important to us than keeping your stuff safe and secure. It’s why we’ve been fighting for transparency and government surveillance reform, and why we’ve been vocal and public with our principles and values. We should have been clearer that none of this is going to change with Dr. Rice’s appointment to our Board.”

The Dropbox users, however, have doubts about this happening. They even demand a Petition being held to analyze the opinions about this appointment. In any case, Dropbox went into deep trouble by this appointment. That is why, we decided to provide you with some other ideas of cloud options for business use, that you may consider.

BOX

Box is a business oriented online cloud storage system, providing great data backup, file synchronization and sharing features for your digital data. Its business centered options include collaboration and messaging between various users.

The plans the platform provides are, as follows:

- Personal (Free) – 10GB storage space / 250 MB file size limit – 1 user

- Starter (4 EUR/user/month) – 100GB storage space / 2 GB file size limit – 1 – 10 users

- Business (12 EUR/user/month) – 1000GB storage space / 5 GB file size limit – min. 3 users

- Enterprise (30 EUR/user/month) – unlimited storage space / 5GB file size limit – customized number of users

The service is a bit pricey but if you are looking for a reliable online storage system, which is secure and user friendly, and at the same time offering diverse collaboration options, the price/space ratio of the service is worth it.

Box is truly advanced in terms of additional features. When you upload your files, you can easily share them with other users and add permissions – whether they can view, edit, delete, etc. your files. Box also allows you to add description when uploading files. On your desktop device you can set Box to automatically sync all the files you place in the Box folder and subfolders. Also, you can manually turn synchronization on and off. 

You can also add new participants who you can collaborate with on the online platform. In terms of the latter, you can set access rights in 7 different levels:

- co owner

- editor

- viewer uploader

- preview downloader

- viewer

- previewer

- uploader

You can send an email to all of your team members at once, or you can write an inside the platform message. You can assign a file to a member and add a due date. Later the user can mark it as complete or reassign it to someone else. The admin can view a detailed stats on user activity.

With Box Business you can create MS Office and Google documents with the help of an additional app called Box Edit that will open Microsoft Office or Google documents on you PC and save them straight to you account.

Shortly, Box is great for business purposes, especially when online collaboration and messaging is needed. The system also provides mobile apps for Android, iPhone and iPad, and Windows Phone.

GOOGLE DRIVE

Formerly Google Docs, Google's online storage platform (now known as Drive) provides great storage functionalities, combined with its native online office features. It also gives its users wonderful collaboration and file sharing options. All you need to do to use the service is set up a Google account and you are good to go. 

The business plans Google Drive offers are, as follows:

Google Drive is now the closest competitor of OneDrive (Microsoft's cloud), which also offers online document creation and editing tools. You can create files using the web interface, then work on the files online and export the finished documents into standard formats like .doc(x), .xls(x), .pdf, or you can preserve Drive's original file formats. 

You can download the Google application for your desktop or mobile device. Once installed, you can use the synchronization options of Google Drive and this way be sure that your files are stored and protected at the online cloud platform. The desktop application appears as a folder in your Windows explorer and as an icon in your task bar. This icon shows you the synchronization status of your files. Keep in mind that if you delete a file from your local drive, it will also be deleted from the Google Drive online platform, because synchronization works both ways.

What makes Google Drive stand apart from other online cloud storage services are definitely its collaboration functionalities. It is great for team work and multiple-participant projects. You can also easily share files with other users through the online storage system. 

Upon generating the link, you can specify sharing options and user capabilities. You can also set various access rights to your collaborators.

Google Drive is supported on any device using Windows, Linux or iOS. Drive provides mobile applications for any mobile device with Android, as well as iPhone, iPad, Windows phone or Blackberry.

SUGARSYNC

The SugarSync file sharing and synchronization system has been recently getting a lot of positive feedback from business users. SugarSync offers excellent online cloud backup for your files and data. It provides a desktop client, using which you can backup and synchronize your files and folders.

The plans this online storage system offers are, as follows:

- 60GB storage space – 1 user - $7.49/month

- 100GB – 1 user - $9.99/month

- 250GB – 1 user - $24.99/month

- 1000GB – 1-3 users - $55/month

- Custom – 3+ users – plans on request

The business versions provide various collaboration options, such as Admin Dashboard, where you can add users and set their permissions and monitor their activity within the platform. Also, you can assign storage limits to the various accounts. 

They also provide an Outlook Plugin, through which you can directly share links via Outlook, rather than sending bulky attachments. The SugarSync provides excellent collaboration options, which is great for teams, working on common projects. Also, SugarSync takes security very seriously, and through its online platform your files will be safe and secure via high level data encryption.

SugarSync provides an online backup service using which you can restore all of your shared data and be sure that you never lose any previous versions of your files. The recovery function ensures an excellent backup for your files.

At a few clicks you can share one file or an entire folder, containing your important documents. You can collaborate with your friends and other users by sharing public links. This provides an easy way of sharing information across business teams. You can also add various permissions for your files, this way ensuring they will only go to the right hands.

The Zoolz intuitively designed cloud storage service is both targeted to home and business users. You can easily determine that Zoolz is quite different from other online backup services. It offers interesting features which are clearly targeted towards business users, but the pricing is quite fair and even personal users can afford the Zoolz' professional services.

Zoolz has an interesting flexible pricing model, which is a system, in which you pay for what you use. You can upgrade and downgrade your storage capacities depending on your current needs. The service offers two kinds of storage: Instant Storage and Cold Storage. The minimum that you get is 50GB Instant Storage and 1 user.


In terms of security, Zoolz offers robust data protection and encryption, which is trusted by large organizations all over the world. They claim that their protection covers and even surpasses any legal requirements.

One of the features Zoolz provides its business users is continuous backup – the system monitors the changes you make on your files and backups your data at the moment you update them. There is no limit to what you backups – you can backup your embedded drives, as well as external drives and your multiple computers. The backup modes that the system provides are: turbo, smart, battery saving and presentation.


The difference between these modes is the amount of system resources it uses. The system does not impose any limit to the file size. You can configure the types of files you want to backup and those you don't want to. Those users, who hold the administration rights can specify the users who are allowed to backup files, and the types of files they can backup. Admins can also configure users' rights and privileges on the online storage platform. They can also set storage limits to various users.


For now the Zoolz data backup system offers mobile applications for Android and iOS devices, but not for Windows Phone or Blackberry.

With Zoolz file sharing and link generation is very easy. You can add additional protection to the files you share using a password. Also, you can set expiration time for your links.

Zoolz provides specialized software, through which you can copy and encrypt your data on an external drive and ship it to Zools for processing your files onto the cloud. This is especially helpful for companies which possess a lot of sensitive data.

Probably the most interesting service offered by Zoolz is the so called Cold Storage. Shortly, this is used for backing up files that are rarely used and don't need frequent updating. It is intended for archiving purposes and its price is lower than the one for Instant Storage.

Also, Zoolz can boast for its powerful search engine. Using it, you can easily search and locate your files among the multiple files you are storing. When performing backup, if you are doing this for multiple computers using one user, you can easily switch between your various computers, without bothering about any data loss.
The registration process for the service is very easy. You simply need to enter your name, email address and password and you are good to go. You are offered a 14-day test trial during which you can familiarize yourself with the file storage platform.


Upon sign up you are offered to download the desktop application. When installed, you get the following start screen where you can select multiple features.


At this point you can select the locations through which data backup will be performed, as well as the type of files that will be backed up. You can also select Cold storage or Instant storage for your digital belongings. For your free trial you get 14 days for testing, 1 user and 50GB free instant storage space.

Generally, the basic upload and backup of your files is performed through the desktop application. Once uploaded, your files are safe on the online storage platform. Through it, you can easily share your stuff with other users and enter restrictions for your files and folders.



As a conclusion, Zoolz is so abundant it terms of services, that it may take a lot of time to read about them. And since we don't want this article to take you a day to read, we advice you to simply take a look and enjoy the service yourselves.