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IDC rates Dropbox sync performance as “best-in-class”

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Published on September 26, 2016

Fast, efficient sync technology is one of the many reasons people choose Dropbox. And leading industry analyst IDC agrees: their independent “EFSS Evaluation Guide” names Dropbox sync performance as best-in-class. For this study, IDC compared the Dropbox sync client against other products in the Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) space, including Microsoft’s OneDrive, Google Drive, Box, and Egnyte. And after a series of tests that evaluated performance in several key areas, IDC concluded that Dropbox sync technology delivers “by far, the fastest update performance.” IDC’s tests also show that Dropbox offers businesses “the fastest upload and download speeds for a large file by a significant margin.” And Dropbox sync is smart, saving time, network costs, and bandwidth by only syncing file changes instead of the whole file over and over again.

Helping customers work smarter and faster

We don’t work in a vacuum. We collaborate with colleagues on all kinds of files across devices and platforms, in offices around the world. “Sync is often overlooked or under-tested when evaluating EFSS services because it is something that essentially happens in the background. However, sync is a crucial part of any EFSS service," said Chandana Gopal, research manager at IDC. “Our evaluation shows, for example, that the top performer on something as common as a sync update is more than 13 times faster than the slowest performer. That kind of performance difference matters, ultimately impacting end-user adoption, productivity and satisfaction.” “EFSS Evaluation Guide: Dropbox Sync Performance,” IDC: Chandana Gopal, Maureen Fleming, July 2016 For teams, seconds and minutes saved add up to countless hours of gained productivity. IDC reports that Dropbox has “by far the fastest performing sync” on their Initial Update and Sync test, taking just 12 seconds to upload a 20MB PowerPoint file, against a group average of 70 seconds. A 4GB MPEG video file took an average of 34.2 minutes to sync across devices, end to end. It took our group of competitors a a total average syncing time of 109.8 minutes. And with these large files, IDC also says that Dropbox “works instantaneously and files appear on the recipient’s desktop very quickly.” We also “recovered nicely from a network interruption,” so your files will get where they need to, even if your connectivity is spotty.

Sync makes a difference

Sync performance is an important part of any EFSS solution, and when it comes to sync, IDC has concluded that Dropbox is best-in-class. We were also named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise File Sync And Share Platforms, Cloud Solutions, Q1 2016, and were positioned in the Leader’s quadrant in the 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for EFSS. With this recognition and almost 200,000 business customers, we believe it’s clear why teams looking for the best tools to stay productive and work efficiently choose Dropbox.