I have a simple CRM system that allows sales to put in customer info and upload appropriate files to create a project.
The system is already being hosted in the cloud. But the office internet upload speed is horrendous. One file may take up to 15 minutes or more to finish, causing a bottleneck in the sales process.
Upgrading our office internet is not an option; what other good solutions are out there?
I propose splitting the project submission form into 2 parts. Project info fields are posted directly to our cloud server webapp and stored in the appropriate DB table, the file submission will actually be submitted to a LAN server with a simple DB and api that will allow the cloud-hosted server webapp to communicate with to retrieve the file if ever needed again via a download link. Details need to be worked out for this set-up. But this is what I want to do in general.
Is this a good approach to solving this slow upload problem? I’ve never done this before, so are there also any obstacles to this implementation (cross-domain restrictions is something that comes into mind, but I believe that can be fixed with using an iFrame)?
If bandwidth is the bottleneck, then you need a solution that doesn’t chew up all your bandwidth. You mentioned that you can’t upgrade your bandwidth – what about putting in a second connection?
If not, the files need to stay on the LAN a little longer. It sounds like your plan would be to keep the files on the LAN forever, but you can store them locally initially and then push them later.
When you do copy the files out to the cloud, be sure to compress them and also setup rate limiting (so they take up maybe 10% of your available bandwidth during business hours).
Also put some monitoring in place to make sure the files are being sent in a timely manner.
I hope nobody needs to download those files! 🙁