This IDC study looks at cloud file sharing and collaboration services market and evaluates the capabilities of three leading providers — Box, Dropbox, and YouSendIt. We assess capabilities overall and across three common use cases: personal user, informal workgroup, and structured use across a department or enterprise.

The CFSC services market is changing rapidly, with many vendors entering the market. The document does not cover all of the offerings but provides an approach to evaluation that can be applied across the market for enterprises planning to purchase a cloud file sharing and collaboration service, for vendors determining how to partner or integrate with one of the service providers, and for vendors competing in this market. We also look at how this market is evolving with the entrance and pending entrance of new competitors.

"Overall, we organized CFSC services into six major capability categories and mapped more than 130 features into these categories. We also provided three common enterprise use cases for the services," according to Maureen Fleming, IDC's vice president of Business Process Management and Middleware Research Programs. "The services are easy to use and ready for use by enterprises, but there are clearly choices that should be made covering best fit for requirements and how to best manage these services."