[manmal]

I agree with the author that working on files is preferable, if possible. But SaaS often also solve the hard problem of dissemination, and good luck syncing an excel file with 100 people via Dropbox.

[loloquwowndueo]

Networked drives have been a thing for ages.

[briHass]

As someone actively pushing a company away from that model to the ubiquitous M365/SharePoint/OneDrive approach, there are so many hidden costs to 'a network share'.

How are you managing VPN access to file servers? How about backups/versioning? Any searching? Access control that can be easily managed by end users? Data governance, RBAC, compliance audits? BYOD/mobile device access?

[troyvit]

> How are you managing VPN access to file servers? How about backups/versioning? Any searching? Access control that can be easily managed by end users? Data governance, RBAC, compliance audits? BYOD/mobile device access?

This seems like a great idea for a SaaS product.

[sbarre]

Yeah it's called Google Workspace.

[troyvit]

Maybe some aspects, but I don't know about the VPN side of it, and my point was directly to the idea of managing shared drives.

[sbarre]

That's fair.. Google does have BeyondCorp but that's not standard in Workspace.. So it's not a packaged deal.

[padseeker]

you can't manage permissions very well or precisely. You can give a user "read only" or "edit" but you cannot manage individual sheets or cells. Spreadsheets are great for lots of things, but sharing them with lots of people is not one of them.