The end of file sharing…the beginning of collaboration. For some time now, that phrase has been splattered prominently near the top of all our web pages as sort of a teaser for our new product, which we are very excited to launch as a beta program at DEMOfall09 (“official” announcement to come later).

What do we mean by “the end of file sharing”? Isn’t LeapFILE essentially a “file sharing” solution for businesses (versus consumer and other forms of file transfer tools such as FTP)? Yes! We do provide file sharing and file transfer solutions for numerous businesses around the world. And even though we and our customers think we do a pretty darn great job of it, the existing way people share files with our solution or with other means is not optimal.

File sharing should not be as complicated and time consuming as it is today. Why should you go to a central file repository to upload a file where it dies a slow death (such as with PainPoint, I mean…SharePoint)? Why should you make your clients and colleagues jump through hoops to exchange confidential documents with you? Why should you conform to how technology works rather than the technology conforming to you? The answer is – you shouldn’t.

Technology, applications, and tools should help you do your job better, not make it more difficult. In an enterprise file management and sharing context, this applies to both end-users as well as IT managers. End-users just want to do their day jobs effectively and be able to collaborate with team members, partners, and clients without dealing with technology issues (read: fewer steps). IT managers want to maintain security and management capabilities over the company’s corporate data while keeping the number of help desk support calls to a minimum (read: more control). I’d like to think that only very few providers out there, including LeapFILE, are somewhat close to this perfect balance of user-friendliness and powerhouse IT control that businesses need. Many solutions today, either software or hardware based, only achieve one or the other and thus falls short…some more than others.

We’re going to change all that and reach this file management and collaboration nirvana with our new product.

Unfortunately, we can’t share the full details of this new product until we officially launch at DEMO on September 21st, but I can tell you what it promises:

• No more hassle of uploading and downloading files from multiple file portals
• No more losing productivity looking for files or working on the wrong files
• No more problems with file sharing when working out of the office or with remote teams
• No more wondering if any confidential files are residing in multiple silos where you have no control over

While I realize that all of this must sound like vaporware at this moment, let me assure you that our rockstar engineers and the rest of the team here are working tirelessly to develop this product by September 21st. Not only because we’ve already committed a lot of resources to launching at DEMO, but also because the concept for this product spawned from very real needs that our customers have been telling us. In poker terms, we are “pot-committed”…we’re going all-in because we believe we have the best and winning hand.