IBM Aspera on Cloud vs. SmartVault

It is best suited to products and companies which extensively use IBM cloud and other cloud hosted services by IBM. This is because since the existing interface is a little challenging to use, IBM's own products and platform is well integrated with IBM Aspera on Cloud and there's relatively little work for the integration team

SmartVault sends out a cover letter with the tax returns that includes a link for them to download their tax returns, avoiding the insecurity of an email attachment. It does not include a statement retrieval feature but does work very nicely with a third-party app called FileThis. The majority of the users in the office have not been able to install the Outlook plug-in due to "a certificate error." In five years, SmartVault has not addressed this issue.

Incentivized

• Ease of use: the Graphical User Interface doesn't require technical know-how to operate
• Delivery Receipts: this allows us the confidence to know our files have reached our customers
• Activity Monitor: lets you know how much data you have used, which is important for budgeting reasons.

Incentivized

• Easy navigation
• Email notifications
• Document previews

• Track upload/download usage OVERALL to know how much space is left
• Track cloud storage overall to know how much space is left
• More easily send single links to users for download, rather than full access (I know it is possible, but it is not intuitive)

Incentivized

• They have cut back on support as have many SaaS companies recently.
• The documentation can sometimes be a little difficult to follow.

Incentivized

The support from IBM is fast and reliable. Very knowledgeable engineers provide you with the support on Aspera. We had a very good experience when opened tickets and we were able to get our issues resolved quickly. Most solutions are provided within a day so you can expect a quick turnaround time. Overall, the support has been very good.

Incentivized

Reaching someone is more difficult than it should be. Also, they don't take possession of known issues always suggesting it is a local PC issue in initial conversations. That, of course, can be frustrating for the end-user.

Incentivized

The service provided by the authorized vendor was excellent. It was a good collaboration between the vendor IT team and internal IT team. They provided us with a timeline and we verified and approved that timeline. Daily stand ups and weekly meetups were conducted to update the internal team on progress. They were able to deliver all deliverables on time also, they conducted both alpha testing and beta version testing in time. Overall, they were able to complete the implementation in the given timeline.

Incentivized

Aspera comes with IBM cloud so there isn’t really a choice. Since it’s built-in, it integrates well and there was no need to buy another solution. Therefore, I did not consider other options. It worked fine, gave access files, push data securely, and did it faster than standard HTTPS.

Incentivized

Sales team was responsive, price was good, functionality was acceptable

• Aspera has changed the way we do business. We are now able to share huge file sets electronically, saving on external drives, shipping costs, time, and effort.
• Our industry is very slow to commit to electronic alternatives to physical media. In less than three years, the positive results of using this service have caused over 70% of our user base to fully commit to electronic delivery, with the number of physical fulfillments quickly being driven toward zero.
• Transfers within our own company, which formerly relied solely on FTP/HTTP transfer drives that would take days now take minutes with Aspera. Our software team relies on the speed and accuracy of the transfers.

Incentivized

• has made sharing documents with large numbers of clients easier
• has forced us into using their service, or spending time to find a better alternative, in my experience.
• Speaking personally the product has cost us several thousand dollars over predicted budget costs for a 3-year projection