Item: OneDrive
Rating: 8
Author: Massimo Emilione

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

OneDrive is used by all users in the organization. We use it to store our personal and sensitive data into the cloud. We have lost countless documents due to some laptops crashing and resorted to using incomplete documents from our email. We use Onedrive as a backup mechanism for our machines and as a way to share content with other users inside and outside our organization that reduces the number of emails going back and forth with revisions.

Pros and Cons

OneDrive allows users to upload documents and videos into the cloud via a webpage or through a linked folder on your machine. Although I do not use the link method as I am not certain if it will use up space on my hard drive.
Since I store everything on the web I can utilize the smaller and the more affordable SSD drives which do perform better and have less failures for other data that is stored on my machine.
I am able to share content to users within my organization and at the same time allow them to make changes to the data, if needed. Another group I can share is with users outside the organization when emails just won't work due to the size of the file.

Downloading folders from the web has its limitations. When I used Gdrive I could download an entire folder and it would automatically zip the file and allow me to download, which granted was a slow process. But I have not been able to find out how to do it on OneDrive. I am not able to select all and then click download
OneDrive still reminds me of SharePoint where it is not as flexible as some of the newer web enabled apps out there when trying to share with one or multiple groups of people. SharePoint is very clunky when trying to upload or download mass volumes of data.
When modifying data on the web directly, there are a lot of times a lag that is apparent. Gdrive is definitely more crisper when multiple people are working inside of a document. Also every time I open the document in the web, it is in readonly mode. I need the ability to edit immediately on the web and then decide to download if required.

Return on Investment

Positive effect is that as more hard drives crash we don't lose sensitive data. It is impossible to put a price tag on that since most don't expect drives to crash even though there is a clear history that it's not if, but when will the drive crash.
Sharing documents through the web has been great. Many times when PCs are out of commission we can get a back and then regain access to those important data files and continue making changes on them without having to install the software to run them.
We did lose the ability to share with groups of people when we moved from Gdrive to 1Drive since group sharing is not as easy to control by the user.

Alternatives Considered

Google Drive and Dropbox

I didn't select OneDrive but it was included in our Office365 subscription which we switched to mainly for the Microsoft Exchange. Everything else that we get is an added benefit like OneDrive. We don't pay extra for the service (at least I'm not aware of extra costs) and it has made our lives easier for sharing content inside and outside the company.

Other Software Used

Infor Lawson Supply Chain Management, Infor BI, Infor CloudSuite Corporate, Infor Global HR, Google Drive, Microsoft Exchange

Likelihood to Recommend

I like the ability to share and store data on the cloud. It reduces the need of a bigger drive, especially while SSD prices remain a little high. It is also great for sharing with those when emailing will not work. Although there are more companies blocking OneDrive which reduces the benefits of this part externally. For Office365 or those who want to use the web to modify their Excel or Word documents it has a very noticeable lag time but is usable.

One rive Hills and Valleys

Overall Satisfaction with OneDrive