Forum Discussion
Why my client really loves WebDAV and network locations
Hi Helios Comms. If users are finding authenticating with IE everyday a hassle they can try using Zee Drive to map network drives to SharePoint Online and OneDrive instead. Zee Drive will keep users authenticated automatically and their drives persistent. More information here on Zee Drive.
Myles
- Michael HafnerSep 20, 2022Copper Contributor
Although from the feature-side this looks implressive, the problem with Zee Drive is the licensing. Already for only 500 users, the license costs are prohibiting: I just did the calculation and it showed me some 27.000 € per year. And the customer I am working currently for has about 100'000 users. So that is a big no-no. If the licensing cost would be something starting for under 10€ per user per year and rapidly going down when the amount of users increases, that would be reasonable. Also that there is no everlasting - reasonably priced - license which can be bought once and be used forever is a big no-no. Also there should be a "per user" license where the same user can use Zee Drive on any amount of computers (workstations and terminal servers) as long as he/she logs on with that same user account. In addition, for enterprises there should be an enterprise-wide concurrent user license (with an ACL so that only users which really needs the functionality of Zee drive needs to be licensed) which for example can be used on a terminal server farm. Of course this needs an on-prem licensing service. Think of an enterprise situation where there is a terminal server farm whicxh is used by 50'000 users but only 200 needs the functionality of Zee Drive.
Maybe you - as the author of Zee Drive can think this over 🙂
- Paul_HK_de_JongSep 21, 2022Iron Contributor
Other solutions have emerged that offer the same rich feature set but are financially more attractive. See here and here.
There are browser-based apps that add a button to the standard ribbon (just like "Open with Explorer") and open an Explorer window in a browser. The features are 99%+ the same as Windows Explorer plus there are additional features like search, thumbnails, metadata, preview email attachments in the browser, allow editing of non-Office files (e.g., PDF), ...
I just did the math for 500 users using Explorer, this will cost you $1000 per year.
Using browser-technology offers multiple advantages. It is easy to deploy since it requires no client-side installs, it works with modern browsers on Windows and macOS and updates are made in a single central location. Instead of using WebDAV as a protocol it uses the modern SharePoint REST API.