Want to increase remote worker productivity?
Do you want to provide cloud storage solutions to your employees so they can work better remotely?
But the corporate files are stored on a local file server that is not suitable for remote access?
When employees work from corporate headquarters, accessing files and folders is easy because the file server's network shares are mapped to a drive letter on employees' Windows workstations. Unlike traditional file server access, modern cloud storage solutions such as Box, Dropbox, ShareFile and SharePoint all rely on file synchronization technologies. With these solutions, a "Dropbox" folder or a "OneDrive" folder is the way to start working with files and folders. Once files and folders are stored in these special folders, the content is synced to the cloud and is available on many client devices.
Although cloud storage solutions are good, they are not suitable for every use case. There are at least four reasons why organizations around the world still use file servers for their data. First, for compliance and security reasons, companies need to store files on their file servers, in a specific data center and within the borders of a specific country. Second, there is a large amount of data that is difficult to migrate to the cloud. Third, there are legacy applications and existing workflows that need to run on the existing file servers. Fourth, the company has already selected an object storage solution such as Amazon S3 or Windows Azure Blob as the final destination for the data.
If you need to keep data on your file servers or on object storage services, we offer a remote file access solution for Windows devices, including Windows client devices such as Windows 11 and Windows 10 and Windows server devices such as Windows Server 2019. It's a solution that does not rely on a virtual private network (VPN) or remote desktop (RDP). Instead, it provides remote file access via HTTP RESTful protocols.
When the Triofox drive application is installed, a mapped drive or set of mapped drives is deployed on the user's remote Windows devices. Unlike a VPN solution where the drive does not work if the VPN connection is lost, the Triofox drive is always on and communicates with the company's file servers via the Triofox server and alternate HTTPS route. The drive also provides a local cache that stores accessed files and folders. The cache provides offline editing capabilities and also speeds up file transfers, as for files that have been accessed and not changed since, the local copy is used directly without downloading them again from the file servers.
File locking is a feature of the local file server that is included in the VPN solution. Triofox Drive provides the file locking feature without using a virtual private network.
Another feature of the local file server is the ability to set access control for files and folders. Triofox Drive provides NTFS permissions and file access control without the need for a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
Sometimes you prefer to work on a local folder and then synchronize it with the file server. If the mapped drive is like an on-demand file access, the local folder is like a folder that is always offline and there is always a local copy of it in the folder for two-way synchronization.
With the Triofox Drive application installed, you can right-click on a file or folder on the Windows Explorer drive that represents the Triofox Drive and initiate file sharing via a web link. The file sharing feature can be turned on or off depending on the company's security policies.
Unlike the Windows client, Windows server support is provided by a Windows service running in the background. Since the Windows server is always running, you do not have to log in to an interactive Windows session for the Triofox drive to work. You can think of it as having the client functions available on a Windows server machine without a headset.
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Gladinet's Triofox solution makes the cloud file access solution interoperable with existing file server network shares and provides offline folder capabilities. It has integration with Active Directory, cloud drive mapping, global file locking and NTFS permission control. These native integrations make the file sharing solution an extension of the current file server rather than another data silo that takes away data.
A mapped drive over the HTTPS channel to the corporate file server is an important feature. Employees are familiar with a mapped drive and no additional training is required.
Enterprise users already have enterprise identities in Active Directory and the associated Active Directory federated service and SAML single sign-on. They do not need additional credentials to access a file sharing solution.
Most file sharing solutions provide manual file locking in the form of "check in" and "check out". Triofox provides automatic file locking by detecting requests to open files. When Microsoft Word opens a file, file locking is automatically initiated and automatically terminated when file processing is complete.
Finally, integration with Active Directory and NTFS permissions makes it easier for system administrators to set up permission control. The permissions features set Gladinet's solution apart from the competition.
Do you want to add these features to the VPN?
A traditional VPN requires a stable and active connection to the corporate firewall to function. A disruption of the Internet or an interrupted connection to the firewall interrupts employees' work with unsaved files. With offline editing, remote workers can save and edit documents without an active connection and save the files asynchronously to a corporate file server once the connection is restored.
A firewall provider typically offers VPN without an always-on feature. Always-on VPN requires more infrastructure components, such as an identity server, an authentication server, a compatible client OS, etc. However, most modern cloud applications are always-on, allow offline access to files and folders, and allow files to be stored on a local device before being synchronized with the online servers.
Accessing file servers is hardly high performance, because when a VPN allows it, file access communicates via the SMB/CIFS protocol. First of all, the SMB protocol is not a data streaming protocol with many requests and responses. If we can switch to HTTP streaming for file transfer, performance will improve. Second, HTTP-based file transfer traffic can take advantage of a global content delivery network, so HTTP is faster for cross-continent transfer.