Anyone who has ever tried syncing Outlook folders has experienced the pain (just look at all the activity on Microsoft’s help forum, or TechRepublic’s help forum, or the other numerous advice stops on the Net. The Redmond team does have its own blog focused on Outlook, which is handy to peruse from time to time, however, these all assume staying within the Bill Gates family is the only option. It isn’t.

Take a look at peer-to-peer offerings (like ours) that allow Outlook and file exchange with co-workers directly from one machine to many others. If one PC is offline, our server kicks in as a temporary storage facility. When the PC pops up on the Internet again all content is synced and deleted from our servers automatically.

Quite handy when working on a collaboration project where the entire team needs to access, update and manage a bunch of files, email or a calendar. Having shared Windows and Outlook folders accessible to all team member PCs right from their native Outlook GUI, allows everyone to be more efficient without having to switch applications or learn a new system.

Ideally, a syncing solution shouldn’t require any interaction with the company server - users should be able to connect one machine to the rest of the group directly, making the process of working from anywhere much more efficient. The help forums mentioned above all discuss problems dealing with just this issue of managing inefficiencies caused by the Exchange Server / Outlook syncing process. In our case, this direct interaction is entirely secured using very strong encryption and an SSL communication protocol.

Choose the right tool and peer-to-peer connectivity can be painless while extending the practical use of syncing email, calendars and files.