Sharpcast
Encyclopedia
SugarSync is a free service that actively syncs your files across all your computers and devices. SugarSync is operated by SugarSync, Inc. and is based in San Mateo, California
. SugarSync enables its users to backup, access, sync and share all of your documents, photos, music and movies so that you can access them from your laptop, iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, or any other device. SugarSync is available for Windows and Mac OS X
. For mobile devices, SugarSync has a free app for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, and a Windows Phone 7 is in development.
The company, formerly called "Sharpcast", and its service have received press coverage and reviews from various media outlets. In September, 2011, Gizmodo
reviewed SugarSync and 10 other services (including Dropbox
, Apple's iCloud
, Box.net
, Amazon
, Google
and more, and they named SugarSync the "Ultimate Victor" as the Best Cloud Service. The service's major competitors are Dropbox, Apple's iCloud
, Box.net
, Amazon
Cloud Drive, and other Cloud services.
). In 2005, the company received a first round of $3 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson
and Selby Ventures. In February 2006, Sharpcast unveiled Sharpcast Photos, a tool for synchronizing images between multiple devices including PCs and mobile phones. One month later, Sharpcast finished a second round of venture capital funding from Draper Fisher Jurvertson, Selby Ventures and Sigma Partners for a total of $16.5 million. The same three investors put in another $10 million in December 2008 for a total of $26.5 million.
Both founders left the company in November 2008, and Laura Yecies was appointed the CEO. Yecies and her team re-focused the company and launched the new service - SugarSync - and re-branded the company as SugarSync moving forward.
SugarSync is currently led by the following management team:
In December 2006 Sharpcast inked a deal with Alltel
for Sharpcast Photos to be the "standard and exclusive" sync tool for the wireless carrier's Windows Mobile
-enabled smartphones. Deals were also made with Lexar
and Corel
to provide backup services to their customers.
Sharpcast Photos was shut down at the end of January 2009. Users were given the option to migrate to the SugarSync service or retrieve their photos.
SugarSync is the company's newest product and was launched in March 2008. The software is designed to sync all of a user's files (documents, media, photos, etc.) across as many machines as desired. editor N'Gai Croal
dubbed SugarSync an "interesting solution" even before its launch for its ability to "automatically sync your documents, photos and multimedia files to the company's servers and any machine you designate."
In 2006, TechCrunch
's Michael Arrington
said about the company's field: "It's the future. The question is whether Sharpcast will be part of it or not. If they execute, they will be."
SugarSync also works as an online backup utility and users can access all their data from a personalized subdomain on the SugarSync website under the structure of username.sugarsync.com.
SugarSync differentiates itself from competitors by employing an integrated and intelligent automatic refresh of its sync. Unlike many competitors, SugarSync does not require users to schedule weekly updates of synced files. Instead, SugarSync constantly monitors changes to files—additions, deletions, edits—and syncs these changes with any other linked devices as well as the SugarSync servers.
In 2006, Walt Mossberg praised the Sharpcast data synchronization service in The Wall Street Journal
.
In 2008, USA Today
reviewed the SugarSync data synchronization service.
In 2011, Gizmodo
reviewed SugarSync and 10 competitors (including Dropbox, Apple's iCloud, Box.net, Amazon's Cloud Drive, and more) and named SugarSync the "Ultimate Victor", stating that "SugarSync is essentially everything we wanted. It combines the best bits of all of the other services and weaves it together into a fast and intuitive package."
As a result, there are several unofficial SugarSync addons and applications available. These addons come both in the form of web services and browser extensions such as cloudHQ for SugarSync (which allows users to sync Google Docs with SugarSync storage and edit SugarSync documents from Google Docs interface) and desktop applications such as SugarSync Linux desktop client by Mark Willis (which allows users to sync folders on Linux machines with SugarSync).
Sync 5 GB of data across an unlimited number of devices.
San Mateo, California
San Mateo is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a population of approximately 100,000 , it is one of the larger suburbs on the San Francisco Peninsula, located between Burlingame to the north, Foster City to the east, Belmont to the south,...
. SugarSync enables its users to backup, access, sync and share all of your documents, photos, music and movies so that you can access them from your laptop, iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, or any other device. SugarSync is available for Windows and Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
. For mobile devices, SugarSync has a free app for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, and a Windows Phone 7 is in development.
The company, formerly called "Sharpcast", and its service have received press coverage and reviews from various media outlets. In September, 2011, Gizmodo
Gizmodo
Gizmodo is a technology weblog about consumer electronics. It is part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton and is known for its up-to-date coverage of the technology industry, along with topics as broad as design; architecture; space and science....
reviewed SugarSync and 10 other services (including Dropbox
Dropbox
Dropbox was a five-piece American rock band formed in 2002. The group had one minor hit song in "Wishbone" which received some air time on MTV2 and Fuse and was featured in TV commercials...
, Apple's iCloud
ICloud
iCloud is a cloud storage and cloud computing service from Apple Inc. announced on June 6, 2011 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference . The service allows users to store data such as music files on remote computer servers for download to multiple devices such as iPhones, iPods, iPads, and...
, Box.net
Box.net
Box is an online File Sharing and Cloud Content Management service for enterprise companies. The company has adopted a freemium business model, and provides 5GB of free storage for personal accounts. A mobile version of the service is available for Android, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and WebOS devices...
, Amazon
Amazon
The Amazons were a legendary nation of female warriors in Greek mythology.Amazon is an eponym, derived from the legend, for any woman warrior or athlete, including:* Amazon, nom de guerre of a Roman gladiatrix at Halicarnassus...
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and more, and they named SugarSync the "Ultimate Victor" as the Best Cloud Service. The service's major competitors are Dropbox, Apple's iCloud
ICloud
iCloud is a cloud storage and cloud computing service from Apple Inc. announced on June 6, 2011 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference . The service allows users to store data such as music files on remote computer servers for download to multiple devices such as iPhones, iPods, iPads, and...
, Box.net
Box.net
Box is an online File Sharing and Cloud Content Management service for enterprise companies. The company has adopted a freemium business model, and provides 5GB of free storage for personal accounts. A mobile version of the service is available for Android, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and WebOS devices...
, Amazon
Amazon
The Amazons were a legendary nation of female warriors in Greek mythology.Amazon is an eponym, derived from the legend, for any woman warrior or athlete, including:* Amazon, nom de guerre of a Roman gladiatrix at Halicarnassus...
Cloud Drive, and other Cloud services.
Company history
SugarSync was born out of a company by the name of Sharpcast, which was incorporated in 2004 by Gibu Thomas (CEO) and Ben Strong (Chief technical officerChief technical officer
A chief technology officer is an executive-level position in a company or other entity whose occupant is focused on scientific and technological issues within an organization....
). In 2005, the company received a first round of $3 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Draper Fisher Jurvetson is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with affiliate offices in more than 30 cities around the world and over $7 billion in capital commitments....
and Selby Ventures. In February 2006, Sharpcast unveiled Sharpcast Photos, a tool for synchronizing images between multiple devices including PCs and mobile phones. One month later, Sharpcast finished a second round of venture capital funding from Draper Fisher Jurvertson, Selby Ventures and Sigma Partners for a total of $16.5 million. The same three investors put in another $10 million in December 2008 for a total of $26.5 million.
Both founders left the company in November 2008, and Laura Yecies was appointed the CEO. Yecies and her team re-focused the company and launched the new service - SugarSync - and re-branded the company as SugarSync moving forward.
SugarSync is currently led by the following management team:
- Laura Yecies (CEO)
- Peter Chantel (CFO)
- Brock LaPorte (Vice President, Engineering)
- Drew Garcia (Vice President, Product Management)
- Mike Rudolph (Vice President, Marketing)
- Patrick Nguyen (Vice President, Business Development)
Product history
Sharpcast's first product was Sharpcast Photos, which was software designed to make it easier for people to view their photos on multiple devices and share them with friends via the Internet. This product was the precursor to Sharpcast’s larger, more ambitious project, SugarSync.In December 2006 Sharpcast inked a deal with Alltel
Alltel
Alltel Corporation is a wireless service provider, primarily based in the United States. Before an acquisition by Verizon Wireless, it served 34 states. After the merger, Alltel continues to serve six states, mostly in rural areas...
for Sharpcast Photos to be the "standard and exclusive" sync tool for the wireless carrier's Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...
-enabled smartphones. Deals were also made with Lexar
Lexar
Lexar Media, Inc. is an American manufacturer of digital media products based in Fremont, CA. Products manufactured by Lexar include SD cards, Memory Sticks, keydrives, CompactFlash cards and card readers. Lexar's Memory Stick Duos also have versions adapted for the PSP which includes a version of...
and Corel
Corel
Corel Corporation from the abbreviation is a computer software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that specializes in graphics processing, similar to Adobe Systems...
to provide backup services to their customers.
Sharpcast Photos was shut down at the end of January 2009. Users were given the option to migrate to the SugarSync service or retrieve their photos.
SugarSync is the company's newest product and was launched in March 2008. The software is designed to sync all of a user's files (documents, media, photos, etc.) across as many machines as desired. editor N'Gai Croal
N'Gai Croal
N'Gai Croal is a video game critic and consultant, previously employed by Newsweek, currently involved in his own consultancy company.Croal started out as consumer technology writer at Newsweek, but became best known to the gaming world for the Newsweek-associated Level Up blog.Croal's criticism of...
dubbed SugarSync an "interesting solution" even before its launch for its ability to "automatically sync your documents, photos and multimedia files to the company's servers and any machine you designate."
In 2006, TechCrunch
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
's Michael Arrington
Michael Arrington
J. Michael Arrington is the founder and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere...
said about the company's field: "It's the future. The question is whether Sharpcast will be part of it or not. If they execute, they will be."
SugarSync also works as an online backup utility and users can access all their data from a personalized subdomain on the SugarSync website under the structure of username.sugarsync.com.
SugarSync differentiates itself from competitors by employing an integrated and intelligent automatic refresh of its sync. Unlike many competitors, SugarSync does not require users to schedule weekly updates of synced files. Instead, SugarSync constantly monitors changes to files—additions, deletions, edits—and syncs these changes with any other linked devices as well as the SugarSync servers.
Product Reviews
Several of the company's products have received editorial reviews. SugarSync Manager, SugarSync Mobile for BlackBerry 1.1.8, SugarSync (Windows).In 2006, Walt Mossberg praised the Sharpcast data synchronization service in The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
.
In 2008, USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
reviewed the SugarSync data synchronization service.
In 2011, Gizmodo
Gizmodo
Gizmodo is a technology weblog about consumer electronics. It is part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton and is known for its up-to-date coverage of the technology industry, along with topics as broad as design; architecture; space and science....
reviewed SugarSync and 10 competitors (including Dropbox, Apple's iCloud, Box.net, Amazon's Cloud Drive, and more) and named SugarSync the "Ultimate Victor", stating that "SugarSync is essentially everything we wanted. It combines the best bits of all of the other services and weaves it together into a fast and intuitive package."
Features
Of SugarSync's many features, the most notable is its Universal Sync platform. The platform is the structure for its sync product.Universal Sync platform
The Universal Sync platform is SugarSync's universal media synchronization engine. The company calls it the industry's first true "push" synchronization, offering numerous advantages including:- Media transcoding which supports a variety of device types in constrained computing and network environments
- A high fault-tolerant storage service with industry-strength encryption
- Deep handling of specific media types and a rich web front-end for secure remote access to files
- Integrated e-commerce server for flexible CRM including user account management, credit card billing, promotions, email and integration with 3rd-party systems and services
- A software development kit and APIs for extending the system and connecting to 3rd-party applications and services.
Software development kit and APIs
In March 2010, SugarSync announced SugarSync Platform API that allows third-party developers to create applications that can create, read and modify files stored in users’ SugarSync accounts.As a result, there are several unofficial SugarSync addons and applications available. These addons come both in the form of web services and browser extensions such as cloudHQ for SugarSync (which allows users to sync Google Docs with SugarSync storage and edit SugarSync documents from Google Docs interface) and desktop applications such as SugarSync Linux desktop client by Mark Willis (which allows users to sync folders on Linux machines with SugarSync).
Awards
- Red HerringRed Herring (magazine)Red Herring was a technology business magazine, which flourished during the dot com boom, with global distribution and bureaus in Bangalore, Beijing, and Paris. It also sponsored conferences designed to bring venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and technologists together. But the magazine went into...
Top 100 winner, 2006 - SuperNova & TechCrunch's Top Connected Innovator, 2006
- DEMO '06 Presenter
- ReadWriteWeb's Best Web LittleCo "Most Promising for 2007"
Partnerships
SugarSync announced a partnership with Webroot in August of 2010 in which Webroot would include SugarSync technologies in their newest security suite. SugarSync technologies power the newly added ‘Sync and Sharing’ feature of Webroot Internet Security Complete. Details of the partnership were not disclosed.Free account (5 GB)
- SugarSync provides everyone with a 5GB account for free. This free 5GB account does not require a credit card, and never expires.
- Free cloud storage gives you instant and easy access to your data anytime, anywhere.
- Online backup and automatic file sync for work files or personal files like photos, videos, and music.
- Download free mobile apps to sync iPhoneIPhoneThe iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, iPadIPadThe iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
, Android, BlackBerryBlackBerryBlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
, Windows MobileWindows MobileWindows Mobile is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft that was used in smartphones and Pocket PCs, but by 2011 was rarely supplied on new phones. The last version is "Windows Mobile 6.5.5"; it is superseded by Windows Phone, which does not run Windows Mobile software.Windows Mobile is...
, and SymbianSymbianSymbian is a mobile operating system and computing platform designed for smartphones and currently maintained by Accenture. The Symbian platform is the successor to Symbian OS and Nokia Series 60; unlike Symbian OS, which needed an additional user interface system, Symbian includes a user...
devices. - According to SugarSync's terms and conditionshttp://www.sugarsync.com/terms.html: "If you don't use the account for a period of 90 days or more (for example, no synching or back up of files for 90 days), your Free Account may be automatically terminated."
Sync 5 GB of data across an unlimited number of devices.
- + 250 MB if you have an iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, or Symbian devices
- + 750 MB with the "getting started program"
- + 500 MB with the referral plan
- + 500 MB with each invitation validated by your friends
- + 10 GB for each friend who subscribes to a paid account
See also
- Remote backup serviceRemote backup serviceA remote, online, or managed backup service is a service that provides users with a system for the backup and storage of computer files. Online backup providers are companies that provide this type of service to end users ....
- Comparison of online backup services
- Comparison of file hosting servicesComparison of file hosting servicesA comparison of file hosting services.-External links:* List and comparison of file hosting services, online file storage providers, 1-click-hosters and cyberlockers* Big list of file hosting services and online file storage providers....
- Cloud storageCloud storageCloud storage is a model of networked online storage where data is stored on virtualized pools of storage which are generally hosted by third parties. Hosting companies operate large data centers; and people who require their data to be hosted buy or lease storage capacity from them and use it for...
- Dropbox (service), a direct competitor