Global File Sharing for Distributed Teams

Consolidate files and folders into a global workspace inside a cloud file server solution. The workforce across multiple branch offices can collaborate and share efficiently.

Case Study - Global File Access for a Franchise Company

The case study is about a franchise company with corporate headquarters and franchised outlets throughout North America. People are always on the move in such a distributed and dispersed business world, and they need to access their applications and data outside of the main office.

The company chose to use a VPN for remote access, but it ran into several issues. Lousy Internet connectivity or a weak Wi-Fi signal was among the problems users encountered, making file access extremely difficult. High latency resulted in poor results and a poor user experience, with response times ranging from 90 to 100 milliseconds.

The IT team also tried remote desktop solutions from Citrix and VMware for remote access, but instituting and maintaining a remote desktop system was very expensive. It required hardware, software, ongoing maintenance, upgrades, training, and support.

Copying files from franchised locations to the company's headquarters file servers became a nightmare. Furthermore, external file sharing necessitated a copy of corporate data into cloud storage services such as Dropbox or ShareFile, resulting in Data Sprawl and increased costs. The CIO just wanted to provide remote workers and franchised operators with safe and mobile access to on-premises file server shares.

Remote Offline Editing

Lesson Learned

Since many franchise locations required fast and safe data access from the corporate headquarters, it was critical to choose a solution that would use existing technology rather than re-engineering the workflow or increasing costs. Furthermore, creating a site-to-site VPN link between all franchise stores and the corporate headquarters would be prohibitively expensive and inefficient.

Global File Access Solution for Branch Office Workers

Gladinet solutions allow an organization to provide simple, secure access to company files over the Internet for all their remote file server access, secure file sharing, file synchronization, backup, and collaboration needs.

Global workspace, which includes global file access and global file sharing, is a critical use case for cloud file servers.

Global Workspace

Gladinet creates one view of all your branch office file servers, where multiple devices can seamlessly access that in various branch locations for distributed teams. The solution allows collaboration, file access, and sharing with file locking, version control, and business continuity.

Distributed Teams
Cloud File Shares

Cloud File Shares

Use Team Folders in the cloud-like file shares in the office with file locking, comments, change notifications, and version control.

Cloud Drive Mapping

Cloud Drive Mapping

Store, sync, and share your business files across multiple devices using familiar tools like drag and drop, Windows Explorer, and Mac Finder.

Mobile File Access

Mobile File Access

Mobilize your workforce with quick and easy secure mobile file access to corporate file servers without a VPN.

Global File Locking

Global File Locking

End-users need to control global concurrent online access to files by using file locking to maintain consistency.

Auditing and Reporting

Auditing and Reporting

Audit traces and file change history are good features for businesses to meet compliance and regulation.

Branch Office File Sharing Made Easy!

A mapped network drive is the default file accessing method inside a corporate network. Files and folders are served directly from corporate file servers. Windows desktop machines with group policy setup and active directory security settings have network drives automatically mapped to file server network shares and be available immediately upon a user's login to a Windows workstation.

For the mobile workforce working from branch offices, accessing files and folders may not be as straightforward as those working from corporate headquarters. Site-to-site VPN may need to be used to access files from centralized corporate file servers.

Consolidate branch office file servers into one cloud file server will make file access, collaboration, and sharing much easier for your workforce.

Multi-Site Collaboration

Gladinet solutions provide file server network folder synchronization and cloud backup to enhance business continuity and cloud migration.

  • Global Namespace - Branch and main offices share the same folder structure and work on the same set of files without fear of file corruption.
  • Cloud Backup - Cloud backup is a unique folder synchronization technology that provides snapshot restore and instant cloud access.
  • Enhanced Performance - Once a local folder is attached and starts to contribute files and folder structures to your cloud storage, it speeds up access from the other sites.
Remote Folder Sync to Cloud

Files and folders migration to a cloud file server!

File server folder synchronization is an excellent way to migrate file server network shared folders to a centralized cloud file server. The Global workspace is a centralized cloud file server repository when files and folders from multiple branch offices populate into the global workspace. Cloud file servers centralize remote file server access, file sharing, and collaboration while at the same time keeping local file servers at each branch office for local backup and local performance enhancements.

Good usability drives adoption for global workforce

The global workforce accesses corporate file servers via a VPN with features like drive mapping and file locking. The modern global workforce also gets files and folders from OneDrive, Google Drive, Citrix ShareFile, Dropbox, and Box. The two different kinds of file access and sharing applications are representing two separate data silos. Gladinet is capable of united the corporate file servers and cloud file sharing usability into one cohesive solution.

Drive Mapping

Triofox provides a mapped drive over HTTPS/SSL for seamless file access.

Folder Permissions

Define different permissions for folders at different levels of the directory structure.

Offline Editing

Local files can be read and modified when the laptop is not connected.

Version Control

Version control can be used to resolve conflicts with offline editing mode.

Link Sharing

Use web links to share files and folders with recipients or to receive files.

Mobile Access

Access files and folders from web browsers and mobile devices.

Ready to elevate file servers online and boost mobile workforce productivity?