DEMO: Document Storage and Sharing

Storing Documents in the Cloud

Of course we're creating documents, and we're probably going to want to save those documents. Maybe we would just want to save it on our local machine, and that's fine, that's pretty straightforward. But many times we want to save it up into the cloud for all the benefits that we have when it's up in the cloud: it's accessible by many different devices, we can share it with others. There's a lot of reasons why we might want to store it up in the cloud.

Factors to Consider

When you're looking at different online storage, there are several factors to consider:

• What are the storage limits
• Do they do backups
• How is the file synchronization between maybe your machine and the cloud
• What does file encryption look like
• How are the servers maintained
• What are the security mechanisms that they have in place
• What are the mobile platforms that they work on
• What does help and support look like

So there are several factors that we consider, although the three big ones that I'm about to show you really do well in most of these areas.

Three Online Storage Solutions

Let's compare three of my favorite online storage solutions. Here we have OneDrive, which is a Microsoft product; we have Google Drive, which is a Google product obviously; and then we have Dropbox, which is its own thing, it's Dropbox.

These three I think are amazing apps, and I use all three pretty much on a daily basis, and I'm a big fan of all three of them. I haven't always been, I will tell you that. I haven't always been a fan specifically of OneDrive - it's been pretty painful in the past, but they've gotten it now where it's really good.

If you notice, all three of them have this center area right here where our documents are. So we've got this here on Google Drive and Dropbox, so that's all similar. We see the menu items all over here, and there's a very similar menu that we see on the left hand side. So we see a lot of similarities between these, and I'm going to tell you there are a lot of similarities.

Creating Documents

One of the big differences with this: if I click on create and upload here, I can create a Word document, or Excel document, PowerPoint presentation, any of those Microsoft applications that I have as part of the suite. Now if I click on Google Drive, obviously I'm getting a similar menu, but instead it's for Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides.

Now Dropbox is a little different. Dropbox is really not meant to be a full suite like that. It's pretty much strictly a place that I can store documents and sync documents and stuff. So if I click on create here, I can create a folder. There are documents I can create, but what's interesting is it does have Microsoft Word - I can create a Microsoft Word document, a Google Doc. Quite honestly I haven't actually used these before. It has a few options here; here's presentations, Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides. So it has some options here. I haven't explored it too much, but that's not necessarily the intent of what Dropbox is all about. My guess is that this isn't a full feature set of being able to work with those documents; it's really more just for storage.

Syncing

Dropbox was the first to perfect syncing. What I mean by that is you would actually install a client onto your machine, and then it would create some folders, and if you dropped anything in those folders, it would show up here. It worked amazing. It really perfected this idea of syncing, so that way if there were any conflicts with other devices - like you shared the same document on two different documents, and then it went to try to sync those and realized, hey, they're different - it really handled that really well.

I can't say that to be the case with OneDrive. That was one of my biggest problems with OneDrive: it wouldn't sync very well, and so it had caused all sorts of problems with the online version versus the one that was on my desktop, because it has a client as well. So there were a lot of problems with OneDrive that Dropbox had figured out really early on.

Sharing is great with Dropbox. Dropbox was really built to do this, so I think from just a sheer document storage front, Dropbox probably wins on that. But there are some advantages to Google Drive and OneDrive, and one of the reasons why I use all three of these is because they each have their strengths and weaknesses.

Comparing the Three

Let's compare these three: OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox. Let's say I have a Microsoft document and I'm storing it. I've had luck in all three of these. There are some real advantages to have on OneDrive, so it really wins when it comes to Microsoft documents - I mean, it's hard to beat that, right. But I've had pretty good luck with Google Drive opening up and storing Microsoft documents as well, so I wouldn't shy away from this too much, even though when you upload it, it gives you a little warning and says it's not really meant for Microsoft documents, we can't guarantee that it's going to maintain itself well in this environment. Despite that, I've had really good luck with it. And then I love using Dropbox, that it just does this syncing.

Now how about your Google Documents? In my experience, I haven't had a lot of experience with the Dropbox, so I really couldn't quite speak to that, but for the most part you just use it on Google Drive. You don't really use it in these other applications.

Then let's take a look at collaboration. From a collaboration standpoint, I find all three of these work well for collaboration. I've used all three of these very successfully a ton for collaboration, working with other people and sharing it out with other people. I only gave half credit for OneDrive just because I'm not the biggest fan of the way their share permissions are structured, and it's not always clear versus the other two, which seem much simpler to me.

Then we have online access, the ability to access these things online. I've rated all of them very high. I don't have as much experience with Dropbox online, but I've never had any issues with it, and I've used the online versions of these a lot.

Then there's local access. This is if you were to install a client and have the client and the documents downloaded locally. I would say Dropbox has been amazing, it's been rock solid for the longest time. I've had issues with OneDrive in the past, but they seem to have cleared that up. Google Drive, not a big fan of their option with this, the local access to it. I have to jump through a bunch of hoops just to make sure that my document is going to be available when I'm offline, when I know I'm not going to have connectivity. I have to jump through some hoops to make sure that it's on my machine, so I haven't had great luck with that, and so I'm not giving them credit for that.

And then ease of use. For the ease of use, I would say probably Google Drive and Dropbox win it for that one.

Which One Would I Use

So which one would I use, which one would I recommend? Quite honestly, I've already said I use all three of these, and I'm a big fan of all three of these, and I use them for different purposes. I probably should consolidate to make it a little bit simpler. At some point in time I'll probably consolidate to maybe OneDrive and SharePoint in the future, but that's for other reasons, of just consolidating all of the communication and stuff that happens on it. Right now I'm pretty vested into all three of these solutions, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

SharePoint

I did mention OneDrive and SharePoint, so I probably should mention SharePoint. SharePoint is very similar to OneDrive, but OneDrive is usually more like a personal storage for me that I could share out to other people, versus SharePoint is more of a mass storage for a company that people can all save to and all have access to, and it's built better for collaboration. So really the platform is the same, but it's kind of packaged a little differently and sold a little differently.

SharePoint, I would say, has been a beast in the past. It's okay now. I'm not a huge fan of SharePoint, quite honestly, but in an enterprise, large organization it's probably a necessary beast.