Eight Criteria for Selececting a Digital File Delivery Service

Eight CritEria for SElECting a Digital filE DElivEry SErviCE Februrary 2008 YouSendIt, Inc. 1919 S.Bascom Ave., 3rd Floor Campbell, CA 95008 (408) 879-9118 taBlE of ContEntS: PagE Summary .............................................................02 Criteria for Web-based file delivery ...........................02 Managing the New Realities of Business .........................03 The Benefits of Web-based Digital File Delivery ..................04 Criteria for an Effective Digital-File Delivery Service ...............05 Achieving the Ideal Criteria .............................................................07 Conclusion ............................................................................................11 WhitE PaPEr 1 Eight Criteria for Selecting a Digital File Delivery Service Summary: Regaining Command of Information Growth As an IT executive, you are the focal point of a communications explosion. A large part of your mission today is to track and assure delivery of your organization’s digital communications. But the massive volume of files and their ever increasing size have made this responsibility extremely complex. Your infrastructure often is bombarded by huge files from every department: • Advertising needs to send high-resolution graphics. • Media needs fast approvals of complex video cuts and music tracks. • Production must send out point-of-sale materials and other image-heavy documents. • Sales and Marketing team members need to transmit PowerPoint presentations with embedded images. • Design wants to share large files composed of drawings and high-resolution photos. • HR needs a way to send training videos to outlying facilities across the nation or the world. • The CFO is ready to send analysts a complex presentation with extensive data, images and video of facilities. This deluge of information continuously floods your IT network, and you get the flak if any single piece bounces back because it’s too large for the recipient’s inbox or connectivity was not maintained. In fact, the amount of corporate e-mail is growing at the rate of 30 percent a year, and nearly a third of those e-mails contain attachments. But, in the United States, 80 percent of business users have experienced problems with e-mail attachment size limits. Attachments have become largely useless for today’s businesses, because e-mail systems are likely to reject anything over 5 MB. As a result, companies have resorted to expensive and slow courier services, cumbersome FTP sites or potentially risky ad hoc applications. With limited resources, you have had little time or financial support to address the impact of the communications upsurge that is thundering through your organization. Criteria for Web-based file delivery IT professionals need a cost-effective solution to combat the challenges presented by large files and large volumes of files that must be transmitted to partners and customers locally or globally. Webbased file delivery services can meet this need if they satisfy a number of critical criteria: 1. Flexibility and Assurance. The ability to transmit digital content of all formats and sizes and to trace those deliveries to ensure they have reached their destinations. 2. Ease of Use. A digital file delivery method that is powerful and yet simple to use, re quiring no special training. It should make file transmission easy to access, use and verify. WhitE PaPEr 2 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Workflow Integration. Available directly from the productivity and professional tools of business users, a service that becomes part of the natural, everyday process of the user’s workflow. Branding and Personalization. A service that can carry the branding of the business that is using it and that is personalized to the company’s needs. It should appear to be part of the company’s own processes, not some add-on, standalone application that pulls the user from the company’s brand. Web Site Accessibility. A platform that seamlessly integrates not only to business work flows but also to the Web site of each company that uses it. Employees, customers, partners and prospects should be able to send digital files directly from a drop box on the company’s site. Proven Technology. A technology that is robust and proven and that has been widely adopted both in the marketplace and within company infrastructures. Secure, Scalable, Reliable, Available. A service that is highly secure, easily scalable, reliable and widely available, with easy 24/7 access from any geography in the world to meet the needs of global companies and independent creative professionals around the world. Minimal Costs. No hidden costs or overhead. Businesses should pay for only the level of service they need and not be required to buy, install or maintain software. Developers of digital content delivery services have pursued these criteria with some of the world’s most skillful innovators, and now these criteria are in sight. One service company that has achieved this objective is YouSendIt. It currently stands as a premier example of a Web-based service that enables files up to 2 GB in size to be delivered promptly and safely while managing delivery of any number of documents to ensure they reach their destinations expeditiously. Across the globe, users are accessing YouSendIt directly from their normal business applications as part of their work processes to regain command and control of their organization’s explosive information growth, protect their IT networks, and provide digital file delivery that is fast and always assured. Managing the New Realities of Business Prompted by globalization, niche marketing and a mobile workforce, the demands on corporate IT departments have reached tremendous proportions. Employees need to share information in real time. But as that information has grown exponentially in size and volume, the people who rely on it have spread farther apart, working remotely in other parts of the world. Complicating the issue is not just the growing volume of data that must be transmitted among suppliers, employees and customers, but the growing variety of that data, in video, audio and graphics formats. The delivery of all this new content, along with traditional business communications, must be managed and tracked, secure and reliable, swift and intact. At the same time, recent regulations, ranging from Sarbanes-Oxley requirements to HIPAA rules, necessitate strict tracking of all communications to ensure that, in every instance, they can be discovered, recovered and accounted for. WhitE PaPEr 3 Just when IT has become absolutely critical to the world’s new, nimble business models, however, IT departments have found themselves hobbled by a number of factors: • Globalization requires IT to distribute and troubleshoot software updates and new applications anywhere in the world, on a 24-hour schedule. o Each new global location produces an increasing number of large digital files that must be stored somewhere and maintained over long periods. • IT managers are heavily constrained by the investments they already have made in technology. o They are under pressure to demonstrate ever greater returns on that investment before top management will consider additional resources. • With limited resources, IT personnel constantly are diverted to put out technological fires in the headquarters suite and field offices. o They rarely find the time to look beyond current urgencies to address new technology needs, and IT fails to surface as a critical priority in longrange planning. • With user demand outpacing the company’s willingness to put additional technology in place, employees are adopting ad hoc software or other file delivery methods that generate the potential for data breaches while degrading the IT department’s ability to track, trace and audit files. o Regularly, staff members resort to copying large files onto disks and delivering them via expensive and slow courier services. The results are much higher administrative costs and less-satisfied customers. o In 2006, more than 650 million envelopes containing CDs and DVDs were sent via overnight courier, an agonizingly sluggish and costly method in a world operating at digital speed. • IT may have attempted to patch the problem by creating an FTP site. In that case, however, the department must train internal and external clients to use FTP, manage access to the site and ensure its security, with more opportunities for breaches to occur in the network as individuals outside the company are added. o Creative and business professionals often are not technology-oriented and find FTP to be a cumbersome way to try to send their large files. So IT needs to spend more time “hand-holding” and coaching these users, whose unhappiness continues to grow. Not addressing these problems effectively only aggravates them; so by taking no action, IT managers find themselves contributing to the degradation of file management and assured communication. The Benefits of Web-based Digital File Delivery With such barriers to business mounting, IT professionals are finding value in Web-based services for file delivery. Employing software as a service, online file delivery methods offer exceptional benefits: • Digital files can be uploaded rapidly by the sender and downloaded very quickly by WhitE PaPEr 4 • • • • • • • • multiple recipients. With no software or hardware investments required, the time to value for these subscription services is immediate. Risk to the IT department is eliminated, since all back-end operations are handled by the hosting service in “the cloud” and no software needs to be distributed or installed. E-mail attachments, and their ensuing bounce-backs, are eliminated. IT managers no longer need to set up, manage and provide training for FTP sites as a file delivery methodology. Large files no longer need reside on the IT department’s servers within e-mail attachments. Instead, they are maintained for a designated period on the host’s servers for access via the Web. Overall costs are reduced as corporate departments curtail expensive courier shipments and use online delivery instead. Files reach recipients more rapidly than through courier services, expediting collaboration and approvals. As a result, revenue flow improves because projects are completed more quickly and can be invoiced earlier. Further, businesses can handle more jobs—producing more revenue—within a given time period because delays are minimized. Customer satisfaction rises because transmission of files is more efficient and customer-imposed changes can be incorporated more readily with online file delivery. Criteria for an Effective Digital-File Delivery Service While most digital file delivery services reflect these important benefits, the services differ in a number of ways. When IT professionals are examining such service offerings, the offerings should be evaluated on eight specific criteria to ensure that file transfers remain secure, dependable, convenient and compliant with regulatory requirements. The following criteria can enable IT professionals to select a truly effective file delivery system that will grow as their company expands without degradation of service: 1. Flexibility and Assurance: The ability to transmit digital content of all formats and sizes. The service should allow for the largest of files to be transmitted as easily as the smallest. It should enable large volumes of files to be exchanged conveniently so that it is flexible enough for users to enjoy the benefits of their business processes without having to modify those processes to fit the limitations of the delivery service. The service also should verify the delivery of every file with receipts and automate this process to provide the business with a way to ensure compliance with regulations impacting publicly held companies, healthcare organizations and other types of organizations. 2. Ease of use: A digital file delivery method that is powerful and yet simple to use, requiring no special training. To obtain the full benefit of a digital file delivery service, it must be adopted throughout the company. The service, therefore, should be very easy to use, with the minimal number of steps and an interface that is comfortable for all levels of users. It also should be easy for customers and other external users to em ploy in communicating and collaborating with the company. It should make file WhitE PaPEr 5 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. transmission easy to access, use and verify. From the first moment of access, neither the IT department nor the user should need to be concerned about installing, learning or managing software. Workflow integration: Available directly from the productivity and professional tools of business users, a service that becomes part of the natural, everyday process of the user’s workflow and activity. Transferring a digital file via the online delivery service should be a “second-nature” function. The number of steps needed to select and send the file should be minimal, with few or no extra page clicks required. An effective file delivery system should be available not only from the Web but also directly from computer-based applications and the desktop. When users are creating designs in a graphics program or are editing video or audio files, they should be able to send those files directly from the applications in which they are working, without needing to seek out the delivery-service site on the Web. Similarly, the service should offer a computer-based client so that existing files can be transferred right from the desktop. Branding and Personalization: A service that can carry the branding of the business that is using it and that is personalized to the company’s needs. It should appear to be part of the company’s own processes, not some add-on, standalone application that pulls the user from the company’s brand. Every message sent and every message downloaded should be able to be accessed from a screen that reflects the company’s image and messaging. Web Site Accessibility: A platform that seamlessly integrates not only to business workflows but also to the Web site of each company that uses it. Employees, customers, partners and prospects should be able to send digital files directly from a drop box on the company’s site, keeping the customer on the site and in tune with the messages of the business. Proven Technology: A technology that is robust and proven and that has been widely adopted both in the marketplace and within company infrastructures. The digital file delivery service should be proven on a global scale, with an experience base extending to millions of users and an infrastructure that has demonstrated its ability to handle millions of transactions every month. The service should have demonstrated its robustness by successfully managing millions of messages every month in every geography on Earth. Its adoption rate should be reflected in its activity and growth. Secure, Scalable, Reliable, Available: A service that is highly secure, easily scalable, reliable and widely available through the Web, with 24/7 access from any geography and any working hours in time zones around the world to meet the needs of global companies and independent creative professionals. The service must have a record of near-perfect uptime and should operate with several networked data centers so that files are backed up in separate locations. It should scale easily to support growth and serve as a mission-critical system for ensuring that delivery to customers, partners and suppliers remains prompt and reliable, no matter how rapidly the company expands or where it expands globally. Files must be secured during upload and down load and while they are stored in the service’s data centers. The data centers WhitE PaPEr 6 8. themselves must be protected from intrusion, as well. Also, the service should provide for a method to authenticate file recipients and offer password protection for an extra layer of certainty. Minimal costs: No hidden costs or overhead. Businesses should pay for only the level of service they need and not be required to buy, install or maintain software. The user should be able to take advantage of the best level of service for his or her business and then grow to higher service levels as the business becomes increasingly successful and larger. Achieving the Ideal Criteria Each of these criteria presents a formidable challenge to developers of digital content delivery service, but the top minds in technology have been very innovative in creating new approaches to file delivery. One of the most successful has been YouSendIt, with a service that has been adopted rapidly in virtually every country around the world. YouSendIt created an easy-to-use product employing proven software as a service so that all the complexities are handled behind the scenes on YouSendIt’s servers. YouSendIt has become a critical part of its customers’ processes. For example, to improve its business workflow, sign-industry franchisor FASTSIGNS adopted YouSendIt so customers could send graphic files to its local stores via the Web for conversion into signs. Now FASTSIGNS is saving $40,000 to $50,000 a year on hardware and overhead while customer satisfaction has grown, since files can be sent more easily and rapidly than before. Of greatest importance, YouSendIt has focused its effort on satisfying each of the eight criteria to consider when selecting a digital file delivery service and has been acknowledge for setting the industry standard for many of them: 1. Flexibility and Assurance • YouSendIt allows users to select one or more files for transfer and then send the file with a single click. • With YouSendIt, subscribers easily upload files as large as 2 GB through the Web to a highly secure hosted server. • When the file is sent, recipients are notified automatically by e-mail that a file is waiting for them. • Multiple recipients immediately can download the files rapidly and safely from YouSendIt’s servers through a globally accessible Web site. • The entire process for a file weighing in at dozens of megabits takes less time than addressing a courier’s shipping label. • Unlike a courier package that can be left on a doorstep or in a neighboring office where others may delay or intercept its delivery, YouSendIt files can be received only by the individuals whom the sender intended to receive it. • Every delivery can be traced and is accompanied by an electronic receipt. • Every file can be tracked and audited to relieve the concerns about regulatory compliance inherent in other methodologies. • YouSendIt’s servers are positioned around the world in a manner that allows WhitE PaPEr 7 2. • • • • 3. • • • 4. flexible distribution of traffic geographically. o The technology examines the IP address of an incoming file and, using an IP mapping database, determines the best server to handle the request. o Since upload transfer speed on the Internet degrades by a factor of two for every 1,000 miles that the signal is sent, this location-based distribution provides the fastest transmission speeds. o YouSendIt operates five data centers, situated in the UK; Herndon, Virginia; and Atlanta, plus two in San Jose, California. Their locations have been determined by where they can best optimize the user experience. o The result is upload speeds that are as much as 25 percent faster than smaller companies offering single-location servers. Ease of Use YouSendIt is a software-as-a-service technology that operates through the Web. All operations, software and storage are hosted on YouSendIt’s secure servers so that users never have to download, install or maintain applications. Access to YouSendIt is simple and always close at hand. Files can be delivered from YouSendIt’s Web site, from a desktop client, directly from the company’s workflow applications, or even from a branded drop box on the user’s own Web site. Files are sent from a very intuitively designed interface that offers registered users the flexibility of including a message and choosing security and tracking options through simple check-boxes. It’s as easy as sending an e-mail but with the power of a high-performance engine. Workflow Integration YouSendIt has partnered with a range of the business world’s most popular software providers to integrate its file delivery service into the applications people use to create and communicate. o For example, through free downloadable plug-ins, graphics files can be sent directly from Adobe Photoshop and video or music files from Roxio, without leaving these applications. YouSendIt integrates directly with Microsoft Outlook, as well. With these API integrations, YouSendIt is as convenient to use as spell-check. Users send files through YouSendIt with a single click. They do not need to navigate through multiple pages. Instead of hindering workflow, sending files with YouSendIt enhances it. o YouSendIt’s simplified approach to file sending is built on both ease of use and speed. o The average multi-megabye file is uploaded in seconds and can be down loaded in just seconds more anywhere across the globe by multiple recipients. In effect, YouSendIt supports a consistent workflow that reaches across the hall or across the globe. Branding and Personalization WhitE PaPEr 8 • Subscribers to YouSendIt can customize an online drop box to retain their company’s own branding, graphics and messaging. The drop box enables the business to receive multiple files of up to 2 GB each from suppliers, customers, internal departments and other corporate divisions around the world. • This brand image is carried through on screens where recipients download messages as well as company sites where messages can be uploaded. • YouSendIt’s simple and flexible interface becomes an integral part of the business’ processes for employees, customers and partners with individualized branding intact. o On Center, a provider of bidding technology for the construction industry, has integrated a co-branded YouSendIt service into its latest software version to give customers a fast, free way to transmit huge takeoff and project files without worrying about e-mail inbox capacity. 5. Web Site Accessibility • Companies can embed YouSendIt into their own Web sites, so that customers and partners visiting the site can send files directly from the business’ own branded Web site page. • Customers never need to leave the company’s site to upload or download digital content. Keeping clients and prospects on the corporation’s site for their interactions with the company is a primary goal of most businesses. YouSendIt adds crucial functionality to the site to keep the company’s message consistently in front of site visitors. 6. Proven Technology YouSendIt has become the global standard for digital file delivery service. o More than six million active users rely on YouSendIt’s servers to fulfill their needs. o YouSendIt’s subscriber base is growing by more than 300 percent a year. o YouSendIt completes more than eight million transactions per month. Each day YouSendIt processes up to one million transactions. o YouSendIt is used by businesses and individuals in virtually every country on Earth. o YouSendIt has a solid reputation for product development and evolution, bringing new ease of use and business value to the marketplace on a regular basis. 7. Secure, Scalable, Reliable, Available Security measures are built into YouSendIt at every stage of the delivery process. • During transmission, all files are encrypted using the Secure Socket Layer/https protocol. The system passes meta-data (such as a retail store identifier that serves as the target for uploading files) back to the sender, along with a URL for downloading the file. • Files are secured during storage in YouSendIt’s hosting facility, which provides its own security system and disaster-recovery programs, with redundant power sources and with broadband connections from separate providers to ensure uptime. • During storage, all files are encrypted and the file names are scrambled on the storage servers. • When recipients download files from YouSendIt’s servers, the SSL protocol applies WhitE PaPEr 9 • • • as well. The sender may create a file password that can be provided to recipients by e-mail or phone. This password is stored in scrambled form on YouSendIt’s servers with oneway encryption, so internal employees cannot log in as a customer. Users also have the option of Zipping files and then password-protecting and encrypting them for an extra layer of impenetrability. YouSendIt provides authenticated pickup, when specified by the sender. This measure ensures that only people with e-mail addresses designated during transmission as recipients can download the file. Scalability is inherent in YouSendIt because it is Web-based and hosted. Businesses can scale their file delivery capabilities rapidly at low cost. • It uses LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP/Perl/Python) applications and languages with a Linux server so that the system can scale very rapidly. • Contributing to scalability is the fact that YouSendIt is a software-as-a-service technology, so only a single instance of the software on YouSendIt’s server cluster is required. • All users are served by that single cluster, rather than separate databases for various users, so scaling is a relatively simple matter. o YouSendIt has the ability to handle very large clients very quickly, as was the case with the City of Los Angeles which registered 30,000 individual users on YouSendIt without a blip. Reliability is ensured by the redundancy in YouSendIt’s service. • YouSendIt runs multiple, networked data centers so that disaster recovery is built into the system. o Few smaller file-transfer companies have even attempted this capacity for complete replication, and most operate with only a single data center, a fact that makes data vulnerable to an array of potential hazards. • YouSendIt does not use offline backup, which can expose data to loss, theft or sabotage. Rather, all files are stored with YouSendIt in multiple centers and always are in YouSendIt’s possession. • YouSendIt averts downtime and heightens reliability by employing multiple broadband service providers in its data centers with an automatic switchover if one service is interrupted. • The YouSendIt service also provides extended reliability in its use, offering versions that incorporate resumable upload technology. • YouSendIt and its mail servers have a high reputation in the industry. They do not appear on any blacklists, and they are included regularly by whitelist providers. As a result, YouSendIt has 93 percent inbox penetration for e-mails—even when users provide their own subject line and message that may be exposed to spamfilter scrutiny. WhitE PaPEr 10 Availability is the foundation of YouSendIt’s service. • It is always up and online, one click away from access 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from anywhere in the world. • YouSendIt enables global companies to have data, documents and creative projects available sooner than other delivery methods allow, because these files are transmitted in minutes or seconds from one desktop to another. • Time zones no longer become a barrier to collaboration because crucial files are al ways available to multiple recipients after being uploaded to YouSendIt’s servers. 8. Minimal Costs IT professionals never need to invest in software, installation, upgrades or maintenance with YouSendIt. All the software is hosted and updated automatically on YouSendIt’s servers. • Companies have their choice of three levels of subscription service from YouSendIt, each offering a package of features to match the various levels of business growth. As companies expand, they can move easily to new levels of cost-effective service with out hardware or software investments on their part. o At its Corporate Suite level, YouSendIt offers unlimited monthly downloads and download bandwidth and at least 20 GB of long-term storage space. A New Level of Support for the IT Professional With file delivery services similar to YouSendIt, IT professionals are reformatting their work and their lives. Built specifically to meet the most important criteria for businesses, YouSendIt is a crucial resource for businesses across the globe. For more information about YouSendIt, visit http://www.yousendit.com/, e-mail sales@ yousendit.com or call (408) 879-9118. WhitE PaPEr 11