Huddle is going after SharePoint with a new connector that lets organizations move content to the cloud without bringing in outside talent to handle the migration. The London-based collaboration provider says that unlike Microsoft’s platform, its service empowers workers to share and access documents “when on the move with their enterprise ecosystem of customers, partners and contractors.”

The Huddle Content Connector sports a drag and drop interface that makes it particularly easy for SharePoint users to abandon Team Sites and shared drives. Organizations that are hesitant to make a full switch can use the connector to layer Huddle over their on-premise deployments and take advantage of its social collaboration and file synchronization capabilities.

Alastair Mitchell, the chief executive officer of Huddle, says that “SharePoint is dying and soon such legacy enterprise technology will be extinct.” To make it easier for customers to jump ship, the “Huddle Content Connector takes the pain out of moving to the cloud, so companies can now benefit from intuitive and flexible technology, far shorter upgrade cycles, mobile and external working.”

Other new features include a thumbnail media browser, and an activity stream that displays files for approval, notifications, comments, tasks and actions. The log aims to drive team productivity by giving users a better view of what their colleagues are doing.

Huddle’s offensive against Microsoft is not limited to SharePoint. Earlier this month, the firm updated its cloud collaboration solution with an auto sync function that enables users to save files to the cloud directly from their desktop applications. The tool can can also extract emails from Outlook into a virtual drive that can be accessed online or via a mobile device.

Managing mobile at the office

Mobile is a big push for Huddle, having witnessed the proliferation of the smartphone around the same time as its launch a few years back.  Delivering comprehensible mobile solutions to the enterprise is a tricky task for even the most established in the business, like Microsoft, leaving the likes of Huddle to fill in the gaps.  Microsoft is making its own strides in this sector, having taken in Nokia to round out its hardware offerings.  Wikibon analyst Scott Lowe feels Microsoft would additionally benefit from the acquisition of BlackBerry to fulfill its mobile enterprise suite.

This is where virtualization comes into play, a trend that’s impacting IT departments around the world, in large part thanks to the consumerization of IT.

Handset manufacturers need to continue to invest in device and enterprise management tools, allowing consumers to choose the devices that they want to use, whilst giving IT the ability to retain control of corporate apps and data,” says Andy McLoughlin is the EVP Strategy and Co-founder of Huddle.

“A report we released earlier this year, for which Ipsos MORI surveyed 2,000 US office workers, revealed that 23 percent of office workers are aware of their organization’s Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy and personal devices are now coexisting with enterprise-issued gadgets in the workplace. Of the office workers questioned, 12 percent of office workers store enterprise documents on their personal smartphone and 8 percent do the same on their personal tablets.

“Organizations now need to consider how they stop company data walking out of the door with employees and what measures need to be put in place to ensure teams can still get their jobs done without compromising security,” McLoughlin concludes.