YouSendIt Adds New Collaboration Tool for SharePoint

eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

It used to be that large enterprises€”like NASA, for example€”would do research and development on products that would eventually trickle down to the consumer. Products such as invisible ceramic teeth braces, scratch-resistant eyeglass lenses and memory foam for mattresses are only three of the thousands of products that have been developed by the U.S. space program.

More and more, however, products and services originally created for consumers are moving their way up to the enterprise. Tablet PCs, smartphones and personal cloud storage services are three examples of IT products going up€”rather than down€”the business ladder.

/images/stories/YSI.logo.jpgYouSendIt, which started out in 2004 as an alternative-to-email cloud service for sending and receiving large files, has graduated to a whole new business level. It is now being used in 98 percent of the Fortune 500 companies because it has morphed into a full-service enterprise service for doing file storage, file transfers, file syncing, digital signing and other content-collaboration services.

YSI last week launched its newest feature, Workstream, which is a customizable file management and sharing feature that gives businesses a way to transfer files among their own employees and also share them with partners, vendors and customers outside the company.

Workstream runs on virtually all the mainstream platforms, including Windows and Mac OS X desktops, Android phones and tablets, iPhones, and iPads.

Integrates Tightly With Microsoft SharePoint

Most importantly for business, Workstream integrates directly with Microsoft SharePoint, Active Directory and Outlook.

Such a connection with SharePoint€”the world’s most-utilized collaboration software€”is important because it enables users to share content across departments without needing an intermediary Web portal, which can be problematic with regard to firewalls and other security tools.

Thanks to YSI, collaboration projects can be done€”say, for partners or one-time customer needs€”without the user having to add the outsiders to the corporate SharePoint deployment, which can be a time-consuming, even security-threatening, exercise.

Since more and more enterprise workers are bringing work home, Workstream solves the security issue of moving documents across varying platforms and devices. Unlike PDFs, Workstream enables a user to control read/write permissions on documents and prevents final versions of documents from being overwritten.

Although it has gone corporate, YSI maintains its freemium business model of 2GB free accounts, YouSendIt CMO Tony Nemelka told eWEEK.

“We had 34 million unique users during the past year, and they shared more than 100 million files,” Nemelka said. “We’re growing into new lines of business, but we’re not forgetting our roots.”

Freely downloadable custom YSI applications are available for the iOS and Android devices at their respective app stores.

Pricing for the enterprise versions of YSI is as follows: from $12 per user/month up to $30 per user/month, depending upon the options selected.

Chris Preimesberger is eWEEK Editor for Features and Analysis. Twitter: editingwhiz