The truth is that most organizations have growing problems around these exact scenarios. The core issues are data duplication and broken workflow. While data duplication has storage and risk implications, broken workflow can often be much more tangible, being time consuming, disruptive and costly to even the smallest group of people working together.

CloudPointe Connect middleware acts as the middle-man for controlling access to your documents and digital assets.

Establish a connection from CloudPointe Connect to your repository of documents, and now you can share folders or individual documents with anybody, whether they are using a Mac, PC, tablet or smartphone. CloudPointe ensures that when somebody opens a document, they will always see the correct, most updated version. You can selectively choose whether the people you share with can download, print or edit documents. If remote users edit documents, then the revised versions are stored back in your filesystem.

Your original source documents now have a single source of authenticity, and CloudPointe Connect will maintain this as the difinitive location where files are stored. Every time a user requests a shared file, CloudPointe always validates with your single source and ensures that the document is authentic.

Many "file sharing" services require you to upload documents to their storage causing data duplication, and causing the core issue described above.

Once you establish a single source of authenticity with CloudPointe Connect, users will always be driven to the correct, updated version of each file. This is done without distributing copies of the original or previous revisions. This controlled system for distribution eliminates the need to publish or duplicate documents to any secondary storage, reducing the overall storage requirements and simplifying storage management. Reduction in data duplication also reduces the risk of losing documents and the risk associated with sensitive information being leaked.

CloudPointe Connect middleware extends collaboration from your storage to users outside the firewall. In order to maintain workflow, CloudPointe Connect provides check-in and check-out services which integrate with your enterprise storage. If a user outside the firewall checks out a document that resides in a SharePoint repository, it will be checked out in SharePoint and also in CloudPointe so users inside the firewall cannot break the editing process.

This allows you to provide controlled access to vendors, partners and independant contractors to view and modify documents inside your secure document repository, but without needing to create complex access control policies.

CloudPointe Connect can also simplify your daily workflow. Using CloudPointe's document transformation services, you no longer need to print documents to PDF files, or export Photoshop files to images for preview. You can simply send a secure document link to the source Microsoft Word documents or Photoshop PSD files and CloudPointe will automatically convert them into a controlled preview for others to review without any fear of them downloading the original source.