Consumerization of IT is a hot topic these days. First of all – what does this mean? There is no official definition but in the technology press there are a few important ideas. First is the use of consumer technologies within the company IT infrastructure. For instance, employees buying an iPhone – they purchased it and they own it, but they are using their personal device to manage their work email and perhaps other applications. This leads the enterprise IT manager to use tools and technologies to secure and manage applications on the consumer’s device. This is not just related to hardware – the same thing happens with software and particularly cloud applications like SugarSync.
On the other end of the spectrum, consumerization of IT means that traditional enterprise applications need to become more consumer friendly. The end-consumers of enterprise software have become accustomed to technology products being powerful AND easy to use. They are no longer willing to accept arcane user interfaces and slow inaccessible data. These consumers know better because they have experienced better in the consumer world and they are bringing these products, like SugarSync with them to work.
I can think of no better example of this trend then what I experienced on Thursday. Computerworld – one of the largest and most important enterprise IT periodicals did a head-to-head comparison of SugarSync, Dropbox and Box and (once again) we came out the winner! They gave Box a score of 3.5/5, Dropbox a score of 4/5, and SugarSync a score of 4.5/5. The reporter confirms that after using all three, SugarSync is what he personally uses now. Here’s the link to the full review: http://bit.ly/yiNuQL
Then on the same day Good Housekeeping (which gets over 8 million unique views per month online) wrote an article explaining what the Cloud is. At the end of the article, they recommend SugarSync to their readers as the “Full-Featured” option. Here’s the link: http://bit.ly/yocB3G.
It doesn’t get much more “IT” than Computerworld nor much more “consumer” then Good Housekeeping. It’s awesome to be right in the sweet spot of this convergence.
Laura Yecies | The Kitchen Sync 
congratulations
My experience is that anyone who has tried SugarSync has stuck with it despite all the hype surrounding DropBox.
Maybe you guys should plow more $ into marketing. Otherwise I worry that the (weak) network effects of filesharing will cement DB’s lead
Glad you like SugarSync. We just closed a new funding round and plan to be investing more in marketing.
Hi Laura,
Thanks for the reply. To be more accurate about what happened, I installed SugarSync on the user’s computer. Whilst setting up the initial sync, which had not actually begun because I didn’t complete the initial setup, I noticed that he had logged in using a domain account and not a local account.What I did then was log in using the local account, setup SugarSync again and began the initial sync process.
When I then deleted the sync folders using the SugarSync Manage Sync Folders, I inadvertently deleted the second sync folder instead of the first. While I understand that this bit is not SugarSync’s fault, the problem I have is that when I then looked for the original folder on the user’s desktop, it was gone completely. This was early in the initial sync process.
Under SugarSync Manage Sync Folders, I could see references to the files listed but the vast majority were listed as “Pending Upload”. My beef is that SugarSync should have been merely uploading the folder at this stage. When a sync folder is deleted in the SugarSync Manager, it should not delete the original folder on the user’s computer, should it? It should merely just stop backing up that folder, which is how I’ve used SugarSync previously and tested multiple times since then and it warned that the folder would stop being backed up, not that the source folder will be deleted.
I’ve even tried to replicate it by deleting a folder under SugarSync Manage Sync Folders during an initial sync and have not been able to replicate it, indicating it is not functionality issue but a bug. What concerns me most is the thread I posted where multiple persons are having the same problem and it appears that SugarSync’s support is unable or don’t have the time to resolve the issues. Also, more people on the forums have been reporting loss of data for various other reasons.
Lastly, I accept that Dropbox also does not have the feature I suggested. However, a Dropbox is just that: a Dropbox and is ideally not a “live” folder. It’s a location to “copy” files/folders a person wants to have accessible anywhere. Even SugarSync acknowledges this is the way Dropbox is to be used in their own comparisons at https://www.sugarsync.com/sync_comparison.html. Don’t get me wrong, I love(d) SugarSync and think it is a potentially great product I can see as a very viable alternative to Dropbox but until users can be sure their live data is safe, what’s the use in using it as a realtime cloud backup solution? It’s just too easy to lose data unless you use it as a dropbox solution, as far as I can see.
Regards
glad to hear it.
This is exactly how I felt about SugarSync when I discovered it… that was until one day I recommended it to and set it up for a client and in minutes, SugarSync had deleted over 4GB of data from his desktop.
Even though I had a backup, I then tried to technical support in order to find out what the problem could be and how to avoid it but they were not much use. Then, I checked the forums and found so many people who’d lost data using SugarSync and who have had no luck with tech support. I’ve tweeted to SugarSync multiple times asking them to resolve their data loss issues but haven’t gotten a response.
I’ve since moved on and decided on old faithful Acronis. It’s a reliable backup product that keeps getting better and they now have Acronis Online and have iPhone and Android apps in beta to handle syncing to a mobile device. Their cloud product is not as neat, nice-looking or even feature-rich as SugarSync as yet but I trust them with my data and my clients’ data a lot more than I do with SugarSync. I’ve also stuck with Dropbox for my mobile autosync needs as their apps are in beta now. The Dropbox model is much safer against the risk of data loss than SugarSync IMHO.
Because SugarSync is a “true sync” model, they should have is the ability to configure one-way sync where changes on their servers don’t affect the source data. They should also have better disaster receovery.
Here is a link to a forum thread where many users are complaining: http://sugarsync.hivelive.com/posts/d71922ce9f. If SugarSync is serious about being respected as a solution that’s ready for prime time, I suggest they address this as a matter of urgency!
Hi Techbajan,
I’ve investigated your case and discussed it in detail with our support manager. It appears that you were setting up somone else’s account on their computer and that they then in error started syncing using your account. SugarSync does not support multiple instances/accounts of SugarSync on the same computer. When you realized what was happening, you relogged in using the correct account then while SugarSync was running you deleted both computers from the account. When that happens, we moved the files to the cache for protection. That is why the support agent instructed you to not uninstall SugarSync so that we could handle the recovery for you. According to the communication from you you did not follow our instructions and instead did the restore in another manner.
I’m glad that you were able to restore the data and am sorry that you are not satisfied with SugarSync.
I do agree with your suggestion that we should have the ability to configure a one way sync model and this is something we will work on in the future.
I respectfully do not agree that DropBox is any safer as it is a sync application and to my knowledge does not have this one way functionality or anything similar..
Thanks for contacting me and I hope that you will give SugarSync another try.
Thanks,
Laura
Hi Laura,
(Sorry, the post in the other thread should have been here; the excitement of seeing the issue was being reviewed got the better of me :). I pasted it here for the sake of continuity.)
Thanks for the reply. To be more accurate about what happened, I installed SugarSync on the user’s computer. Whilst setting up the initial sync, which had not actually begun because I didn’t complete the initial setup, I noticed that he had logged in using a domain account and not a local account.What I did then was log in using the local account, setup SugarSync again and began the initial sync process.
When I then deleted the sync folders using the SugarSync Manage Sync Folders, I inadvertently deleted the second sync folder instead of the first. While I understand that this bit is not SugarSync’s fault, the problem I have is that when I then looked for the original folder on the user’s desktop, it was gone completely. This was early in the initial sync process.
Under SugarSync Manage Sync Folders, I could see references to the files listed but the vast majority were listed as “Pending Upload”. My beef is that SugarSync should have been merely uploading the folder at this stage. When a sync folder is deleted in the SugarSync Manager, it should not delete the original folder on the user’s computer, should it? It should merely just stop backing up that folder, which is how I’ve used SugarSync previously and tested multiple times since then and it warned that the folder would stop being backed up, not that the source folder will be deleted.
I’ve even tried to replicate it by deleting a folder under SugarSync Manage Sync Folders during an initial sync and have not been able to replicate it, indicating it is not functionality issue but a bug. What concerns me most is the thread I posted where multiple persons are having the same problem and it appears that SugarSync’s support is unable or don’t have the time to resolve the issues. Also, more people on the forums have been reporting loss of data for various other reasons.
Lastly, I accept that Dropbox also does not have the feature I suggested. However, a Dropbox is just that: a Dropbox and is ideally not a “live” folder. It’s a location to “copy” files/folders a person wants to have accessible anywhere. Even SugarSync acknowledges this is the way Dropbox is to be used in their own comparisons at https://www.sugarsync.com/sync_comparison.html. Don’t get me wrong, I love(d) SugarSync and think it is a potentially great product I can see as a very viable alternative to Dropbox but until users can be sure their live data is safe, what’s the use in using it as a realtime cloud backup solution? It’s just too easy to lose data unless you use it as a dropbox solution, as far as I can see.
Regards