Soonr Workplace: Collaboration app with document scan, HD video playback and Microsoft Office

I published about Soonr a while ago when the company was selected by Business 2.0 as one of the 25 Startups to Watch in 2007. Before the iPhone was launched in June 2007, mobile applications were not very common and I was impressed by the capabilities of Soonr , which, at the time, allowed users to remotely browse their files and folders on their desktop computer from their Smartphone even when the computer was offline.

Today, Soonr provides its Online File Sharing and Collaboration services to over 140,000 businesses and offers a wider range of capabilities. During MacWorld 2013, Soonr Workplace got additional features, including Smart File Locking, Document Scan, Full-resolution video playback on iPad, iWorks Rendering Support and QR Support. To see how it works, watch the video I shot at MacWorld 2013 with the demo by Martin Frid-Nielsen, CEO, Soonr.

We published about the ability to directly edit Microsoft Office documents right inside the Soonr Workplace app for ipad, which is not available with most competitors. With the new Smart Locking feature, it will be easier to collaborate on the same Office documents, files will be automatically locked when a user begins editing them locally, preventing conflicting versions of a single file from being generated by others. Then documents are unlocked when they are closed.

Another practical new feature is the full resolution video playback on iPad, allowing to stay inside the application to watch a video when you click on a Youtube link. Additionally, in case there are videos stored in your SoonR account, the progressive download prevents from waiting for the entire download to be done, before starting watching the movie.

According to Soonr, the service is more secure than competitive applications such as Dropbox which recently experienced serious security breaches. Clients such as AT&T and other service providers require a number of compliances and industry standards that SoonR is able to meet. The Soonr service ranks #1 in the ESG Online File Sharing & Collaboration report, which evaluated 19  business cloud vendors.

Soonr operates its own data-centers, unlike Dropbox and others that leave it to Amazon AWS, the data-centers are regional – US, EU and Canada, which means users data is not exported. For instance companies in Canada feel strongly about keeping their data in Canada. Amazon has no data centers in Canada. Last but not least, since 2006, the service has a historic high-uptime of 99.9%, according to Martin Frid-Nielsen, CEO, Soonr.

Eliane Fiolet
Categories: Featured, Tablets
Tags: file sharing, iOS, iPad, mobile application