Online file sharing and sending (OFSS) services are great for consumers and even for some simple business use cases there’s no denying that. But when it comes to mission-critical content and the complex workflows of modern M&E companies, these services just aren’t up to the challenge.
Seven pitfalls of OFSS services for M&E companies
For all the promises of ease, access and user-friendliness of OFSS services, they fail to address the biggest bottleneck of all in moving large video files to other users: the transfer speed.
While employees might think they’re circumventing the annoying FTP process, they’re still left waiting for transfers to complete. Why? Because OFSS services still rely on traditional TCP transfers that don’t maximize network bandwidth. They are just as slow as FTP, but with a friendlier face.
Even if a company advertises that files are encrypted in storage, you have no assurance whether your OFSS provider is following secure design principles. And, let’s say you get the information and your OFSS service is following secure design principles, is your company’s intellectual property and PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data now sitting in someone else’s storage?
Just by using an OFSS service, you could be violating your company’s security policies with respect to PII. Freemium versions of the majority of these products seldom support critical security controls.
You can’t choose where you want your assets stored. OFSS services use their own storage - and that could be anywhere. This means your IT department has no control over the actual server where assets are stored.
Additionally, because you have no control of where the content is stored, you cannot access this storage via other mechanisms. It may be impossible for you to directly interact with your stored files or move your files through an automated workflow that is outside or adjacent to your OFSS storage.
As of July 2017, Dropbox has a file size limit of 20GB per file. That may seem like a lot but with today’s 4K cameras, you could exceed that limit quickly depending on FPS (frames per second), bitrate and codec.
- Poor Control and Visibility
Without direct ownership of or access to the storage and server management, using an OFSS service introduces a dangerous barrier to corporate visibility. Being able to restrict access and assign granular permissions to files ensures that only the right people have access to the content. And, being able to view, track and audit activities means that if a breach occurs you can pinpoint its source.
- No Robust Transfer Mechanisms
Even if you decide that OFS meets all your needs, you can’t afford to waste time starting at the beginning. With large files, a Checkpoint Restart function becomes very important. If a file transfer is interrupted due to internet connectivity or other network challenges, having to manually restart or worse having to start the transfer over from the beginning can be a nightmare in meeting deadlines especially when there’s no file acceleration.
A solution
The answer is to make the move to a next-generation file transfer solution like Signiant Media Shuttle. Media Shuttle is an easy and highly reliable way to transfer large files fast. More than 25,000 companies of all sizes use the solution and enjoy the enterprise security features and flexibility and control of choosing their own storage.
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