File sharing in the business world has become as common as sending email with attachments. In 2005, when Jesse Lipson launched ShareFile, that was not the case. Lipson founded ShareFile in the days before cloud computing was all the rage. By the time Citrix acquired ShareFile in October 2011, the 100% bootstrapped company had grown
Remote workforces continue to grow and telecommuting becomes more commonplace every day as modern technologies like Web conferencing and video chats make it easier for people from all over the world to collaborate on projects or simply work from home. These types of conveniences save money for everyone, and companies like PGi strive to make
SM: Let’s switch to entrepreneurial opportunities. Give me some ideas about interesting collaboration applications that are open areas that could be interesting businesses to build today, given today’s landscape. CL: Sure. I there’s still a lot of opportunities around better unification of the user experience, especially as it relates to data conferencing and Web conferencing.
SM: Interesting, very interesting. I’m interested in also exploring the implications of collaboration/cloud-based collaboration outside of the enterprise. Is that something that you can talk to? Have you been following the evolution outside of the enterprise?
SM: Why do you need that? I guess what I’m trying to understand is Skype-to-Skype calls are very easy. Everybody knows how to do Skype-to-Skype video calls. Where do you come into the picture? CL: It goes back to the user experience and how easy is it for users to manage the sessions, initiate the
Sramana Mitra: Yes. However, they are at different stages of evolution. I think in terms of product road map, they’re all on this path that you just described. But I noticed from my own experience that WebEx does not yet have multi-skin video conferencing, for instance. Neither does Citrix. HD Faces is just starting out,
Sramana Mitra: Absolutely. The cloud-based collaboration, or in any kind of cloud strategy, collaboration is featuring as one of the top items right now. Now, given your experience with the industry, would you talk a little bit with some historical perspective about where we have come from in the cloud collaboration technology and where we
SM: Yes. We use a lot video conferencing in our business also, and we are a little tiny company compared to your clients. There’s something interesting going on in video conferencing. One of the great places where cloud adoption is happening in leaps and bounds, actually in collaboration, it’s especially in video conferencing. I think