This post is part of a series of 10 vendors that have presented their technology to the TechFieldDay attendees, gathered for this edition of Storage Field Day 4. You can find all background about the project here: http://techfieldday.com/event/sfd4/ – This series of blogposts were live notes, published at the end of the presentation but reviewed afterwards. Disclaimer: the attendees are not personally compensated other than our transport and lodging, nor are we obliged to write anything at all.

Company

• Founded: 2004 (LeapFile, changed to Oxygen in 2009)
• Founders: Peter Chang (CEO)
• Financial Status: self-funded
• CEO: Peter Chang

Technology

‘odrive’ is the new product from OxygenCloud. It’s the third step in sharing content after <transfer files> wth LeapFile or <share storage> through OxygenCloud. That 3rd step is <share infrastructure>. In short it is a installable driver for syncing local folders to any type of Cloud. Think Dropbox for the enterprise.

OxygenCloud partners with IBM Storwize (StorWize 7000) using the file services they provide. But it could theoretically be installed in a home NAS. Today this is not AD integrated so an invite is full-access. In a write conflict scenario both files will be saved, the oldest one would be renamed File.conflict. It eliminates the <check-in> <check-out> issues you have with other enterprise products like Scarepoint (pun intended).

At the storage layer we have an oDrive Gateway in front of the physical storage. This gateway could be a VM or a physical appliance. In the frontend the architecture is actually object based storage. It uses REST as the connectivity protocol between the agents and the file servers. In the future the architecture has been designed to use also object storage as a backend. One of the things that is not done today is a Gateway to Gateway synchronisation. That is being handled by the storage itself.

On a first connection only the MetaData is synced to the local drive. Only when the file itself is opened, the data is downloaded. This is called the Accelerated File Sync and gives you the ability to use very big file servers and only take the local storage of the accessed files. And the selection is client based, not user based. This means a file downloaded on one device will not automagically be downloaded on all devices.

Pricing & Availability: the odrive private beta will be released end of november. 

My Take

OxygenCloud did a really good job. They have the right approach in focussing on usability first and extended features later. Everyone uses Sharepoint because they have to but no-body wants to. Everyone uses Dropbox because they want that usability but I haven’t met a single Enterprise customer where Dropbox is approved by IT. OxygenCloud oDrive absolutely has the potential of bringing the consumerization of filesharing to the Enterprise. All other products out there that I have seen so far start from the compliancy model instead of usability. Well done Oxygen and enjoy the happy customers you will get with this product.

Links

• website – https://oxygencloud.com/
• twitter – @Oxygencloud

Video

Here are the 3 parts of the Storage Field Day 4 presentation: Peter Chang on LeapFILE – OxygenCloud and oDrive / How-to Product Demo / Platform Architecture and Whiteboard Deep Dive