Item: Google Drive
Rating: 9
Author: Kaleb-John Loo

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Drive is free-to-use cloud storage for files. At the free tier, users gain access to 16 GB of free online cloud storage that can be accessed via a Google account. Users can then share these files with other users through links, email, or the Google platform. This is invaluable as it provides a free way to store and share files across the organization. We utilize Google Drive if we need a place to store and share word documents, sheets, and presentations as it is a convenient place of access. Google Drive also comes in handy during research and development as a lot of resources on the internet provide documentation through links which can be saved and viewed via Google Drive.

Pros and Cons

Free account.
Variety of file storage.
Preview and editing.
File sharing.

Need a Google Account to get 16 GB of storage.
Sometimes difficult to find what is using space.
Deleting shared files sometimes does not remove them.

Return on Investment

Free storage has an immediate ROI.
Provides alternate option to file sharing.
Allows research to happen more smoothly while browsing the internet.

Usability

Google Drive is simple to use. Uploading files from a computer or a mobile device can be done in a variety of intuitive ways. Downloading is just as easy and Google Drive allows you the option of previewing most files before you download them. Managing one's files is simple and similar to their email and photo platform. The only thing that proves some difficulty is managing shared files.

Support Rating

Google Drive has a lot of users so there is a lot of information on it. Most likely, any problem that you run into has already been solved on a forum somewhere. However, you are unlikely to have many problems or questions as most of what you need is already provided within the product itself.

Alternatives Considered

Dropbox

Google Drive is preferable to Dropbox as it already comes with a Google account. The free storage tier is also more generous than Dropbox. It is easier to share files on Google Drive and most shared documents on the internet are done through Google Drive instead of Dropbox. Google Drive's preview and organization are also more desirable than Dropbox making it much cleaner to use.

Other Software Used

Visual Studio IDE, Slack, Oracle VM VirtualBox

Likelihood to Recommend

Google Drive is useful for quickly saving a file that you need access to from anywhere. It also is useful when you want to share files with an audience as anyone can view them and you can set permissions per file. Google Drive also makes it easy to do a pseudo transfer of files from a mobile device to a computer or vice-versa, you just need to save the file to the Google Drive and then open it on the other device. For enterprise solutions, however, Google Drive is not the right tool unless you are willing to pay for more storage.

Cloud storage at a great price

Overall Satisfaction with Google Drive