AfterTheDotNet

Effective online collaboration tool - Egnyte!

Egnyte, the automated file management system, is one of the companies that is going to launch (beta) version of their application at the web 2.0 expo.

Egnyte helps you manage your files on a computer. You need to download the application and install it on your computer. Once it is installed Egnyte allows you to  activate a folder and its contents will be uploaded and tracked on a regular basis (Mac users do not despair it works on Macs as well!) Each time a document is updated Egnyte saves those versions and notifies users if you are sharing a documents with other users. The privacy settings on Egnyte look good and the feedback, till now, has been good. Some of the unique features are

1. Ability to share individual messages (Outlook, Gmail, Thunderbird and other POP based email services).
2. You can tag files that you share for easier sharing.
3. Changed files are automatically versioned and archived.
4. 1 GB storage space
5. Powerful search abilities

There are other features which are the pipeline but they might not be free. One solution that I would keenly look forward to is allowing users to access Egnyte who are behind firewall.

If you want to use Egnyte to manage your personal documents the system is useful as you instantly have information on the latest versions of all the documents automatically. The interface is easy to use and understand and this is one of the reasons why I think this application has a lot of potential. Since the service is in beta the service is free, so this is the best time to make an account. Egnyte can be used in conjunction with other collaborative tools like Zoho, Thinkfree and Octopz.

Work on Egnyte started back in December 2005 when Vineet Jain, Rajesh Ram, and two others got together to built the solution. Before that Rajesh Ram and Vineet Jain had co-founded Valdero, a supply chain software company that was acquired by One Network Enterprises in September 2005. Valdero had raised $23 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mohr, Davidow Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Integral Capital Partners. So raising money is nothing new to the founders, but in this case they first wanted to build a solid product and than go around shopping for funds.

The product has a tremendous potential and right now they seem to be ahead than competition and therefore have a great future if everything works out right for them.