So I’ll just repeat what everybody keeps shouting: “Cloud”.
For those of you who are already thinking ‘God no!’, bear with me. I’m going to explain some options to help you choose you online document storage since I recently got the opportunity to test the Oracle Content and Experience Cloud Service.
Hold on thight, it might be a bumpy ride ♫
It’s everywhere and everybody uses it.
However, the definition of ‘cloud’ might be different depending on who you’re asking, and there are quite a few services and platforms out there. One of those services is something you can generally describe as document sharing.
Some examples we all know are Dropbox and Google Drive.
But did you know there are many others, too? You can even create your own platform with Nextcloud. That way you don’t hand over every file to a third party. Or you can just buy the hosting at one of their partners. There’s also Microsoft’s Onedrive, which comes bundled with Windows 10.
And then, there’s the Oracle Content and Experience Cloud Service. Yeah… it’s a mouthful.
At first it was called ‘Oracle Documents Cloud’, still a mouthful, but at least it’s clear as to what it does. The change to the new, longer name is probably because you can also create websites with the new tool. This means you get document storage and an editor to create and host your website.
Now, I have to say, while creating the service in the Oracle Cloud portal I bumped into a few errors. The first one was when my newly created account couldn’t login because the password was wrong. And when trying to reset it I got a notification telling me I needed to set security questions before changing it. I could do that… BUT THEN I WOULD NEED ACCESS TO MY ACCOUNT! Oh well… after creating a service request with Oracle Support it was solved fairly easily.
But then, the button for creating a service wouldn’t work… after trying again the next day it suddenly worked. So I created my service and moved on.
The next thing I needed to do was create some folders for everyone to share documentation in, and configure some general settings. This isn’t something other tools are better at. Content and Experience Cloud is pretty user-friendly. You can easily share, upload and create folders and files. Just like in other tools, you can create public links for shared content. Where this stands out is the options you are provided with. It’s very easy to set different rights (reader, downloader or contributor) for someone with a particular link. You can also set an expiration date, access code and decide who can open the link.
What amazed me were the different customization options. It’s pretty thorough. You can even define your own help page. Other options are quota for users, the number of versions each file can have, maximum file size, Oracle Eloqua integration, et cetera.
One big disappointment, however, was the way you need to add other users. First you have to add them in the cloud portal, and only after they click the email sent by the service you can start sharing files and folders. But in order to do that you first need to add them in the service itself. It’s a bit clumsy, but luckily you only have to do this once. And maybe Oracle will improve this as well, who knows.
Then, there’s the desktop client. It wouldn’t be a good product if it didn’t have a client to sync everything with your computer. It’s compatible with W7 and newer versions and OSx10.8 and up.
First of all, it seems to be running smoothly. I can’t really say something about the speed of uploading and downloading because there is no indication on how many files are left or at what rate the files are being uploaded or downloaded. I took note of this and passed it on to development. We’ll see what they come up with.
When starting the app, you’re also presented with an annoying pop-up showing you that it’s loading. None of the other desktop clients providing similar products do this? And… it’s just… annoying… One of the things it does succeed in are notifications. Disable everything, select which notifications to show, … there is even a dropbox-alike menu in Microsoft Office products called ‘Radial Menu’. It’s quite handy as it allows you to open the document in your browser, lock it, share, display info and chat. Do keep in mind that you need to have the desktop client installed and that the document you’re editing must be in your sync folder in order to get this menu. Of course you also have the possibility to disable this.
All in all, it seems like a decent product. With some small tweaks it can certainly be the type of product you need (and I’m a dropbox fan myself). We’ll probably migrate our documentation soon, which will be the real test.
If you are interested to know more, give us a call or check out our cloud offers.
You can also leave a comment below and share your experience with us.
| Price/Month | Storage | Min users | Supported Desktop OS | Mobile | Nice features | Remarks | |
| Dropbox for business | € 10,00 | 2TB
total |
3 | W, Osx10.6+, Linux | Android, iOS | 120 days filerecovery, option to require 2step verification. | Very stable, fast and doesn’t use a lot of resources. |
| Google Drive | € 8,00 | 1TB/
user |
5 | W, Osx10.7+ | Android, iOS | Not always very stable, heavy load on your computer (especially old ones), slow network throughput. | |
| Onedrive for business | € 4,20 | 1TB/
user |
0 | W, OSx10.9+ | Android, iOS, W phone | Integrated in windows 10, maxfilesize 10gb. | Slow software. |
| Onedrive for business | € 8,40 | 5TB/
user |
5 | W, OSx10.9+ | Android, iOS, W phone | Integrated in windows 10, maxfilesize 10gb, encryption, in-place bewaring. | Slow software. |
| Nextcloud (hosted) | € 8,40 | 100GB
total |
~ | W, OSx10.9+, Linux | Android, iOS, W phone | Prices depend on the partner. | |
| Nextcloud (hosted) | € 20,00 | ~ | ~ | W, OSx10.9+, Linux | Android, iOS, W phone | Prices depend on the partner. | |
| Oracle documents cloud | € 13,00 | 100GB
total? |
10 | W7+, OSx10.8+ | Android, iOS | Userfriendly, verydropbox-like, can host websites in own oracle framework. | Still pretty ‘new’. |