The American company I work for once decided that the shared folders of the German team should be located on an American server. So they flew the hard drives to the USA over a week-end. Then the Germans complained because of the time it took them to open their excel files. So the company had to fly the hard drives back to Germany. Anecdotal, but a good example IMHO.
I use Seafile to synchronize my personal files with those of my wife on several machines. I need it because i don't want to depend on 3rd parties such as Dropbox. Also, I don't know how many Gbs I'd get for free with Dropbox. Probably less that I have with my current setup (1Tb). Not sure if this answers your question, though.
not OP, but what was announced 3 paragraphs later could have been written in the same sentence:
"Emails like this are usually riddled with corporate speak so I'm going to give it to you straight: we plan to part ways with up to 336 people from across the company."
I was lucky to work in a building equipped with a Paternoster in Munich, Germany. We had a fancy startup office, but the Paternoster was the feature I liked most!
Speaking foreign languages opens truly opens many opportunity that most monolinguals (especially English-speaking ones) do not even suspect. Yes, my German colleagues and friends all speak English and we could get along fine using it. However we wouldn't be able to share our personalities and cultural differences as well as we do on a daily basis if we didn't share a native language (for them) spoken at a high level (for me).
Can you tell us how he was?
I don't think it is heartbreaking only for people who knew him. He did throw a big part (if not all) of his life away :-/
He is scheduled for another trial for attempted murder, so I am afraid he will never get out of jail.