Why IT departments should worry about Google Drive

April 21, 2012, 7:51 AM – Google Drive is poised to present IT departments one other headache to address.

Drive , the name of Google’s data-syncing cloud storage service that’s rumored to launch sometime next week, will likely offer the various features of popular storage apps together with Dropbox and Box, including 5GB of free storage with upgrades of as much as 100GB of storage for users willing to pay for service.

But there is a difference between other cloud storage apps and Google Drive, that’s namely that the previous are run by small, independent firms while the latter would be run by some of the largest companies in tech and may thus be harder to prevent. Forrester analyst Frank Gillett says that the ubiquity of Google applications similar to Gmail, YouTube and Maps will make it much harder for enterprises to dam Google Drive than Dropbox or Box.

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“It would be tougher to drop Google Drive unless Google makes it easier to specifically block that program,” he says. “Otherwise it is going to be difficult to dam it without blocking other Google services besides.”

Andres Rodriguez, the CEO of enterprise storage vendor Nasuni, also believes that businesses ought to beware of Google Drive and warns IT departments that they will not want the applying running on their network in the event that they require any form of basic security for his or her data.

“Google Drive goes to be aimed squarely at consumers or at SMBs where individuals are fine with having their data unencrypted,” he says. “The model is incredibly compelling however the undeniable fact that it’s originating within the consumer space means there are big gaps that should be filled.”

Rodriguez says that some of the biggest gaps in Google Drive and other consumer-oriented cloud storage applications is they are basically software as a service and thus give service providers access to the information being sent during the cloud. To ensure that such apps to be enterprise friendly, he says that they will are looking to provide an option so that you can let companies sync up users’ data through their very own on-premise network where they’ll be capable of enforce password policies and encryption, among other things.

“Not one of the storage companies appear making any effort to integrate their applications into existing security infrastructure,” he says. “And there is no way that enterprises will probably want to forgo their very own security infrastructure.”

Gillett recommends that businesses stay previous to the curve and shop around for enterprise-friendly mobile cloud storage services until the gigantic-name consumer services get their acts together. Specially he recommends taking a look at storage apps similar to TeamDrive and Nomadesk that offer similar capabilities to Google Drive but that still have strong security policies.

Nomadesk, as an instance, actually has a “Mission Impossible”-style self-destruct feature that automatically deletes a user’s data from the cloud if that user hasn’t logged in after a certain quantity of time. TeamDrive, meanwhile, lets users add on other third-party storage services equivalent to Dropbox if you want to be more safely integrated as an enterprise application. And both companies have remote wipe functionality that permit IT departments directly wipe sensitive data from the cloud they could have leaked inadvertently.

But the base line, says Gillett, is that users will still are looking to use their very own personal mobile cloud storage services for both work and private data, and that Google should installed more effort in ensuring Google Drive is able for the enterprise to embrace.

“If Google desires to serve its enterprise customers it should add features with a purpose to make it simpler to regulate work and private data,” he says. “i do not believe we’ll see that during the primary iteration.”

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