Recommendations for private cloud software...

This topic was created by J. Cook .

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  1. J. Cook Silver badge
    Boffin

    Recommendations for private cloud software...

    I am turning to the brain trust here for some assistance.

    At the company I work for, we deal with a number of vendors who like sending us large files. These are typically files that are over the sane limits of email, and due to the various regulatory entities that govern our business, we can't allow our users access to sites like dropbox, Google Docs, etc. We've looked at setting up an FTP/SFTP/SCP server for our vendors to upload files to, but so far none of them have really worked out.

    Besides OwnCloud, is there anything like dropbox that I can recommend or trial with our company? The basic workflow we are looking for would be something like this:

    The employee working with the rep creates a login for the vendor to use on the site.

    Vendor goes to the site, logs in with their account, and uploads the file(s).

    The site gives the vendor and/or the employee a link with the file's location for sharing.

    The file would stay on the site for a certain period of time, and automatically be removed or archived.

    We would also need the ability to audit the application's usage, and obviously security is paramount.

    Any ideas that the group here can provide would be appreciated.

    (Note to Mods: If I've put this in the wrong spot, please let me know.. Thanks!)

    1. Robin Marlow

      Re: Recommendations for private cloud software...

      Bristol Uni has an in house version of exactly what you want called FLUFF.

      http://www.bris.ac.uk/it-services/applications/fluff/fluff.html

      Might be worth asking if you could set up your own version of it.

    2. 142

      Re: Recommendations for private cloud software...

      J., is your main concern with Dropbox that your data is stored by a third party?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Recommendations for private cloud software...

      Why did the FTP/FTPS/SCP thing not work out?

      Did you try adding HTTP/HTTPS/WebDAV to the server which you setup to do FTP/FTPS/SCP?

      From the sounds of it (if you know how to setup and run an FTP server) you should easily be able to add HTTP capabilities on the front end of it. It's just a bit more configuration.

      1. Alan Bourke

        Re: Recommendations for private cloud software...

        > Why did the FTP/FTPS/SCP thing not work out?

        I would guess that the people on the other end couldn't find their arse with both hands, never mind use a secure transfer method that involved any sort of setup.

    4. This post has been deleted by its author

    5. This post has been deleted by its author

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Recommendations for private cloud software...

      "We've looked at setting up an FTP/SFTP/SCP server for our vendors to upload files to, but so far none of them have really worked out."

      I'm also wondering about this. An area where clients can upload via scp is not hard to set up and there's lots of "sftp"UIs that even non-techy people can manage to use; meanwhile the simplest of cron jobs can clear out old files and an admin can remove the user's login entry if they need to be locked out.

      Given the listed requirements, basically everything you need appears to be bundled with a standard Linux server.

    7. MJD

      Re: Recommendations for private cloud software...

      Sounds like you're wanting to enable people to send you files, rather than sharing them per se.

      ZendTo handles this brilliantly (IMHO). Created by Julian Field (of MailScanner fame).

      See: http://zend.to/

    8. Hegs

      Re: Recommendations for private cloud software...

      A few UK universities use a variation on the original Perl UD Dropbox software to allow people to drop off and pick up large files.

      i.e Julian Fields, creator of MailScanner, has released "zendto" which sounds like a better fit for your needs. It's open source, so if it's not quite right you can hack away to make it work.

      http://www.zendto.com

    9. pstansbu

      Re: Recommendations for private cloud software...

      Not quite private cloud but there is a product similar to Dropbox, but more peace of mind with guaranteed UK location at known sites etc. The person uploading can set time limits on access for those invited to share or predefined project groups gain automatic access to project areas.

      www.univault.ac.uk. It's in the very final stages of testing but you might be able to join the test or have a look pre-release - their contact details are on the site.

  2. Andrew Ducker

    http://www.axway.co.uk/products-solutions/mft/gateways/securetransport is the kind of thing you want to look into.

  3. Spoonsinger

    Is the answer?....

    Respect the amount of raw computing power you have on your desk, (or hand held), computer and personally take responsibility for the information stored there on? (because those who say they will do it for you, don't necessarily have "your" best interests at heart).

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Probox.eu

    Does everything that you list and a huge amount more.

    www.probox.eu

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No Magic Bullet....

    Floppy disks sent by royal mail? Flexible, Secure and probably meeting all required regulations?

    Seriously now, all depends what exact regulatory/operational constraints you have to work under...

    You could use sharepoint (or other collaborative products), create an extranet web site for your suppliers to upload documentation... This is what is usually in place to manage exchange of data with candidates during procurement exercises and to manage exchange of data with suppliers.

    But the ease of use of the open internet never marries well with tight security policies.... and no matter what product/solution you use the real question will be one of rights/access management.

    Do you consider your suppliers as a trusted "members" with access to your intranet or must they stay outside the perimeter... and if they do who controls and validates the transfer of files from one side to the other....etc ad nauseam....

    Good luck !

  6. jfossy

    Bittorrent Sync

    http://www.bittorrent.com/sync

    This does like Dropbox only doesn't store stuff on a 3rd party server. Add bonus is there are no space limitations since all the storage is your own.

    1. Adam 1

      Re: Bittorrent Sync

      +1 for bt sync

      As an added bonus, your clients could generate the secret and tell you rather than have to manage protection of the secret yourself. Also has 24 hour share options and no third party holding the data.

      1. jb99

        Re: Bittorrent Sync

        Another +1 for bittorrent sync. It works very well indeed and seems to be secure.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    quite pricey

    but MOVEit DMZ will do this.

    1. Maharg

      Re: quite pricey

      Yep and Yep, very good

  8. PJD

    Sparkleshare. Does what dropbox does, but on your own server with encrypted transport.

  9. ragnar

    Spideroak? Zero knowledge encryption.

  10. Don Jefe

    Put together a spec of what you really need* and send some RFQ's around for a simple custom application. Rolling secure FTP into a simple application isn't crazy complicated and shouldn't cost much or be much of a maintenance burden. Providing it to the people you're doing business with is also a great value-add (I actually hate that term, the fact I typed it means I've been listening to too many proposals lately). You're making it easy to do business with you!

    Alternatively you could just do SharePoint. We use SharePoint here, and it works just fine, but it's expensive and apparently difficult to deal with because every time I ask for something our little IT group gets grumpy, and it's not just the standard IT people grumpiness, it's actually a pain.

    *I would not go shopping the job out and tell them you wanted to emulate DropBox and add regulatory compliance. They will send you a proposal with many, many zeros in it and your boss will forever think you've got your head in the clouds (ha!).

  11. ld0614

    Skydrive Pro?

    As far as I know its basically a front end for SharePoint that makes it act like Dropbox/Skydrive. Might be worth looking into

  12. colin79666

    Citrix ShareFile

    Provides sufficient enterprise grade security, auditing and cost(!) for most businesses.

  13. 142

    I was just looking into all these services recently...

    Have a look at www.box.com.

    I believe you'd need to use their enterprise edition to get the features you require in relation to auditing, data trails, and enforced file-deletion policies. Enterprise admin users have a lot of control over how they lock down accounts.

    What I noticed about box, was that they have the best attention to detail of any of these companies I've looked at. A few prominent competitors' "prevent user from downloading" functions were trivially bypassed.

    The other company to look at, who appear equally robust, and I believe specialise in larger companies, is egnyte.com.

    They also have the benefit of being UK based, which could help you for regulatory purposes.

    We chose box in the end, as I wasn't happy with Egnyte's audio options, so I can't really go in depth about that one, but I can talk about Box in a bit more detail:

    > "The employee working with the rep creates a login for the vendor to use on the site."

    with box enterprise, you can create different levels of admin users, so I believe you would be able to do this.

    > "Vendor goes to the site, logs in with their account, and uploads the file(s)."

    yes. indeed, you can create folders with upload only permissions for certain users.

    >"The site gives the vendor and/or the employee a link with the file's location for sharing."

    yes, box handles this quite well.

    >"The file would stay on the site for a certain period of time, and automatically be removed or archived."

    Yes. It's possible to disable both the link to the file, or delete the file itself, after a given period of time. From what I know, enterprise admins can set a company-wide policy in this respect.

    >"We would also need the ability to audit the application's usage, and obviously security is paramount."

    Box's auditing tools appear to be very hefty. Even at my team's low level usage, I can see exactly who's accessing my files, when, and from where.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I was just looking into all these services recently...

      Box is US. If he cares about confidentiality, it's one to avoid.

  14. karlp

    Two Options

    First option I normally recommend is LiquidFiles. It's an on-premise VM that is an all-in large file transfer solution. Completely stand-alone, simple to use, well supported, reasonably priced. http://www.liquidfiles.net

    The second option is a bit more of a creative one. There is a company called MinnowIT which makes a piece of software called Foldr for accessing Windows File Servers from mobile devices. They have dedicated iOS apps, and can interface with most any webdav client as well as having a very slick web front end. Binds to Active Directory and (very importantly) respects NTFS user permissions. You could set this system up, have a large windows server "partners" share with folders for each partner. Give highly restricted AD credentials to be used by the partners to login with that are restricted to their sub-folder. Your employees can interact with their partners by simply browsing a local mapped drive. Your partners can either use the web app, or map the webdav drive to their Windows or Mac based endpoints. Again, simple to use, well supported, reasonably priced. http://www.minnow.it

    The choice between the two comes down to whether you want to manage it from AD - or not - and whether you can live without local mapped drives on the vendor/partner side.

    Karl P

    1. baguar

      Re: Two Options

      +1 for LiquidFiles, decent product and should meet all the requirements that you listed.

      You should be able to run-up a demo version for free as well to see if it meets the requirements in your scenario.

      *Disclaimer - we're a (small) customer of LiquidFiles.

  15. Mark Allen

    wetransfer.com

    Wetransfer doesn't quite fit everything you ask, but it is simple. Takes up to 2GB transfers and keeps them for seven days. You upload your big zip file and it gives you a URL in return. You can even just plug in your email addresses and it will notify you and the client when the file is available, as well as telling you when it has been downloaded.

    There is a pro version as well - but I've just been using the free version for shifting videos and similar to friends.

    Best bit of it is the simplicity.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Alfresco

    Hybrid synch from Alfresco.

    You create a private site in the Cloudy-Alfresco for your vendor.

    Your vendor puts the document in the site.

    The doc gets synched to your on-premise Alfresco instance.

    Workflow, remote removal of cloud content, no outsiders inside your firewall etc. etc.

    Yes, I work for them.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Remind me never to go into this type of business. Looks like a complicated minefield out there. :O

  18. This post has been deleted by its author

  19. doug johnston

    As a sole trader, consultant, working globally with clients who want to see videos and documents that can add up to large file groups, I use three solutions.

    Dropbox is useful but have had some issues with links not working. American unfortunately.

    Basecamp is a collaboration system that I find works very well and I use some of its features (not all) when I need long term access from a new client or during an extended sales discussion. Some can take years! Again American unfortunately.

    wetransfer.com, For short term availability with no (apparent) American connections as it is Dutch company, I recommend wetransfer.com as it just 'does what it says on the tin'. Only one supplier firewall/spam filter had an issue with initial notification email, I dont know why, but other than that all customers are happy to get their information this way.

  20. harmjschoonhoven
    Happy

    One.com

    The simple business model of One.com allows you to create a virtually unlimited number of CloudDrives with single or double encryption at the drop of a hat for an extremely low flat fee.

    The only negative comment I can make about One.com is that the Earth spins clockwise in their promo-video.

  21. Ronald van Raaij

    Tresorit

    I see no one has mentione Tresorit ( https://tresorit.com/features ) yet. As a european (Hungarian) company probably a good candidate these days...

    Similar features to all the others, but also data is encrypted before it leaves your computer.

    1. Salts

      Re: Tresorit

      I can also recommend tresorit.com.

  22. Robert E A Harvey

    recomended

    Sharefile.com have collaborative workspaces with secure access, not sure how good the logging is, never used it.

  23. Fuzz

    filesender

    I've been using filesender https://www.assembla.com/spaces/file_sender/wiki for a while works well for me my users find it easy enough to use. Has some limitations at the moment, like only being able to send a single file at a time so folders have to be zipped before sending.

    1. JanMeijer

      Re: filesender

      The FileSender project is working to overcome these limitations. We have code we plan to release in Q1 2014 as a usable 2.0-alpha version featuring multi-file support and fine-grained control over email receipts. The code will be undergoing a code security review about a week from now, our planning assumes no major dramas in that review.

      The 2.0 version also includes the high-speed upload module, although that might be less interesting for organisations outside Research & Educational networking. Although the primary target for FileSender is the research and higher education community we welcome any feedback from (and obviously use by) other sectors. The major advantage we see with FileSender is the complete control you can have by running your own instance. We strive to make it easy to use and easy to setup/operate. Any reasonably capable Linux sysadmin should be able to have it up and running in about an hour.

      If you want to give the multi-file version a try proceed to terasender.uninett.no and pick the one that has multi-file in its name. Get yourself a self-registered account and off you go. It's a test box so no guarantees. Feedback is appreciated.

      Jan Meijer

      Project lead FileSender

  24. CriticalMass

    Wuala

    I like Wuala https://www.wuala.com/en/ as well as OwnCloud. I only use the free versions, not commercially, but Wuala seems to have a bit more than Owncloud...as well as Client-side encryption, versioning & collaboration etc. Based in Switzerland

  25. CrazyLikeAFox

    OwnCloud

    I like OwnCloud - you can host it yourself and that takes away all the hassles of where the data is stored. Assuming you are happy enough with the current web services you have.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Syncplicity?

    http://www.storagereview.com/emc_syncplicity_review

  27. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    Bespoke solution

    If you want a bespoke solution that does not compromise any of your stated requirements then look me up. I'm in London.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    FTP/Web

    Web based interface for clients that links to your FTP server, aka your own dropbox !

  29. umacf24

    Varonis Data Anywhere

    Send and receive links to folders and files, hosted on your infrastructure, authenticated by email.

  30. Mystic Megabyte

    Retroshare?

    I've not tried this but it looks promising.

    http://www.unixmen.com/retroshare-a-next-generation-secure-communication-and-file-sharing-platforn/

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ProjectSend?

    It seems to me that you are not looking for a sync program, more an uploader. Have a look at ProjectSend.org

    Alternatively roll your own with a chunking uploader such as plupload.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Syncplicity

    We've been using this for a while - it seems secure and robust: http://www.syncplicity.com

  33. 4Candle

    Filr does the job!

    Take a look at Filr. You have total control of your files as they stay on your site (keeping your data in the local jurisdiction).

    It is designed to work with Microsoft AD or NetIQ's eDir, and it keeps the file access rights properly. Supports iDevices, Android, Blackberry, Macs and PCs. What's not to like?

    It allows you to share (if you want), without duplicating data all the time.

    More details at: http://www.novell.com/filr/

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