Vista - My experience and suggestions and a crystal ball

FolderShare Team,

First a little background. We used FS quite extensively until we hit the
10,000 file limit, we switched half of our folders to BeInSync to get round
this and it has been painful. In short, their local DB approach I think is
flawed.

I currently sync about 100,000 files across about 10 PCs and this process is
core to our business.

I just wanted to post some comments to aid the development as I think I see
where this is going:
- Pay service = fine with me. If we pay, we can expect service - nothing is
free in this world. Service outage = lost productivity = lost revenue.
- Conflict management and alerting is a must - maybe an outlook plug-in or
sidebar gadget. The key thing is to notify about conflicts asap and have them
remedied
- manage time/date stamps - with MP3 files, if media player scans the
folder, they re-sync. there has to be a better way
- Run as a service is also much needed
- True P2P detection including private IP. If FS can detect the private IP
of peers it could be highly efficient. Relying on NAT'd addresses means that
external interfaces on routers are used which causes a real bottleneck. We
have a VPN WAN and people external too it - finding hosts must be seamless
- Private sync servers - so instead of using the MS servers, we would have
our own.... Sync Server 2008 anyone??? On this note, I can't help but wonder
how much the FolderShare development is actually tied to the development of
the MS Sync Framework ... it just needs products to sit on top.
- Business style deployment and central management - less user setup can
yield more consistency in implementation
- SharePoint integration - could be one for down the road
- Bandwidth detection and managment ... only download highly active files
when mobile etc. If we could set the criteria please....
- Sub folder publishing ... we have some sub-folders within currently sync'd
folders we would like 3rd parties to sync - this would be a really big
feature.

there are a ton more features needed. Fundementally FS is a great product,
the 10,000 file limt has forced us to look elsewhere and so the race is on
between BIS and FS to see who gets a truly stable and feature-rich product
out the door. BIS are doing theirs piecemeal releasing fairly frequent
updates. MS are clearly holding back for a major release - both approaches
have their benefits but also their flaws. My expectations are now really high
for MS, BIS, well, my expectations are lowering yet could be the first.

Having worked with MS products since dos 3.1, I forsee Sync Server 2008 with
a free hosted service with limitations for those trying or not wanting to
pay. It will be tied into a framework which will let people develop and
expand their own applications which will see the Groove and Office 200x
products expanded with plugins to manage sync conflicts, versioning and of
course DRM. Yes, DRM. With syncing files to sales people who could leave etc.
I would highly encourage it.

I'll gladly beta test any of the above - its much needed software which will
reshape how we use file servers. Their role will gradually diminish as we get
effective tools to manage decentralised data. With the storage capacities
ever increasing it becomes ever realistic. Even file download optimisation
will be role based...

Feedback appreciated although I suspect some of the above will be difficult
for MS folks to comment on...

simon

One feature I personally would love is the ability to take a shared folder
off-line, currently if a volume is unavailable it breaks the sync. If you are
using a laptop with an external drive that contains the folder you are
syncing then you need to make sure FS is shutdown before the driver is
removed...

"FileConflict" wrote:

Simon,

A truly great list of feature requests!

Second. Thanks a lot for the feature list.

--
Anton Katz
Program Manager - Windows Live FolderShare

"Jason Dunn" <www@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:076859F7-92B5-4267-96AB-FB72CC349EB2@xxxxxx