A Live-Events Group Replaced Dropbox and Google Drive Sharing With Files.com and European Storage

A European live-events group has grown from a congress agency into an organizer of government summits, major congresses, fashion shows, and large-scale drone displays. It operates through several brands from offices in Europe, the US, and Asia.

That business runs on heavy creative files. Hundreds of events a year each generate tender decks, company-profile presentations, event video in 4K, 8K, and 16K, and stand and booth graphics at print resolution. A small creative team produces the work, and almost none of it stays inside the company. It goes out to dozens of external consultants and to clients wherever in the world the event is being built.

Multi-Terabyte Media for Hundreds of Events a Year

The creative department's digital art lived on Dropbox and Google Drive. Event media is nothing but large files: high-resolution footage and print-ready installation graphics that the team had to push out to consultants and pull back in, over and over, on event deadlines.

And the volume never stopped compounding, because event work is revision work.

Every revision was retained until final approval, and final files were kept for years. The group wanted its heaviest and fastest-growing archive, and its most external-facing data flow, behind corporate identity, on storage it chose.

NIS2 and GDPR Set the Requirements

The group needed to bring its creative estate and external sharing inside its compliance posture without losing the collaboration habits that kept event work moving. Dropbox and Google Drive had been the path of least friction for work that is external by nature, with consultants who change from event to event and clients who need files with zero setup. The team also had a habit worth keeping: two or three people editing the same document in Google Drive at once, watching each other's changes live. Any replacement that took that away would simply be routed around.

What set the requirements was regulation. As a European company, the group is subject to the NIS2 directive, and its IT and cybersecurity leadership made alignment with NIS2 and GDPR the top priority, naming data residency, encryption, and secure file exchange with both internal users and external collaborators. Leadership also weighed the U.S. CLOUD Act and its reach over data held by American providers, even in EU data centres.

The replacement had to support European storage chosen by the group. It had to take identity from Microsoft Entra ID, since the group runs a Microsoft 365 tenant and was moving its infrastructure to Azure, and feed activity into Azure Sentinel. It had to let consultants and clients receive and return heavy files with nothing to install. And it had to preserve live Office co-authoring, or the creative team would never leave.

The group selected Files.com to be that governed front end.

One Files.com Front End Over European Buckets, With SharePoint Still Mounted

The design made Files.com the single interface over storage the group chose, with identity, permissions, and logging on top. Where the data lived was the group's decision, not the platform's. Working with its IT partner, the group began by mapping file ownership and departmental workflows so it could clean and restructure data as the phased migration progressed.

Departmental Wasabi object-storage buckets in two EU countries were mounted behind Files.com through Remote Server Mounts. The arrangement supported the group's residency requirements by placing selected data on European storage under its own accounts.

The design also preserved the collaboration habit. The group's SharePoint site was mounted as a remote server, so simultaneous editing of Office documents continued through the same governed interface. Google Drive, Dropbox, and an FTP server were mounted as well, creating a migration bridge: content still on the legacy systems could be reached through Files.com while departments moved into the new storage model, rather than through a single cutover weekend.

Corporate identity controlled access, external collaborators needed only a browser, and activity flowed into central monitoring. Entra ID provided single sign-on and automated account provisioning and deactivation. Consultants and clients received files through Files.com share links with folder- and file-level permissions, while audit activity fed Azure Sentinel.

The Group's Most External-Facing Data, Inside Its Compliance Posture

With Files.com in production, the group replaced external sharing through Dropbox and Google Drive with a governed front end over storage it chose. What changed:

• The creative department's multi-terabyte media, from 16K footage to print-resolution booth graphics, now sits behind one Entra ID-authenticated Files.com interface, whether it is in the new departmental buckets or on connected systems being phased out.
• The Wasabi buckets place selected data in two EU countries on object storage under the group's own control, supporting its European data-residency requirements.
• Consultants and clients exchange files through permissioned share links, so deliveries and returned revisions can be governed through the same interface.
• Extending the model to the next department or brand means adding a bucket and group behind the same interface. The permission structure extends across every brand in the group.

The Habits Stayed Through a Phased Move

Today, a designer can send a revised stand graphic to an outside consultant through the same permissioned, logged interface used to send it to a colleague. European Wasabi buckets provide a governed destination for media moving off Dropbox and Google Drive, while the mounted legacy systems let the group phase that transition without disrupting active event work.

The group's heaviest files, moving to people outside the company, now sit behind corporate identity and central monitoring. And the group did not buy that by breaking the creative team's way of working. Live co-authoring continues through SharePoint mounted behind Files.com while the storage estate moves into the new model. The group never had to choose between the collaboration and the compliance; Files.com let it keep both.