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Everyone has a favourite tech conference tchotchke. For me, it was always the thumb drive. What better place to store my digital photos and miscellaneous files? And every time I got a new computer, I could easily just download everything from the thumb drives. Then a funny thing started to happen: I began to lose track of them. It's pretty hard to keep tabs on 30+ of those gum-sized things when you move a couple times. Just imagine if the thumb drives contained sensitive corporate data. It's no wonder CIOs hate thumb drives. Enter the obvious solution: cloud-based collaboration tools.
Moving From Physical Media to the Cloud
WorkSmart has many uses. One of the most rudimentary is as a collection of thumb drives on steroids. Why is WorkSmart so robust for file management?
1. No cap on space. With thumb drives, I was always trying to remember which file was on which thumb drive. It was an organizational nightmare. WorkSmart has a robust search solution built in to help you easily find the document you are looking for.
2. Location independence. Before I'd go out on a meeting, I'd always have to remember if I'd packed my thumb drive (and of course, if it was the right one). With the ubiquity of the internet, I now always have access to the files no matter where I am. Plus, as an added bonus, the files are easily accessible on mobile devices and tablets.
3. Collaboration. Data on thumb drives exists within its own silo. From a workflow perspective, I would have to download the file to my computer, email it to whomever I wanted, wait for their response, etc. With our WorkSpaces, you can easily upload a file. Approved team members and outside participants can then comment, modify the file, etc. All of this is done with a full history of revisions, so you don't have to dig through GBs of email to find the e-conversation you are looking for.
R.I.P. Thumb Drives - I'll always have a fondness for those cute little branded thumb drives. But like cassette tapes and Blockbuster Video, their time has come. R.I.P. thumb drives. We'll always have those tech conference memories, but I'm taking my data to the cloud.