Google Drive under scrutiny

The release of the long-awaited cloud storage service from Google, Google Drive, has been met with a flurry of concern over the implications of the service for enterprise and potential data ownership issues.
Google Drive went live last week Tuesday, offering Google users 5GB free storage space and deep integration of existing Google services – potentially giving the service an edge on competitors.
Principal analyst at Ovum, Richard Edwards, says the service will inevitably be used in the enterprise and may present some problems for CIOs.

“Chances are employees will start using this service to do more than share family photos and recipes,” says Edwards. “Corporate e-mail systems are notorious for their measly storage quotas and message attachment size limitations, and so the sharing and distribution of large corporate files, such as PowerPoint presentations, engineering drawings, and creative content, are an obvious use case for Google Drive.”
Edwards says the unsanctioned use of cloud storage services presents a “real headache” for corporate governance, risk and compliance managers. While some organisations already block access to file sharing services, Edwards says the inevitability of the use of such services warrants further investigation.
Ovum advises enterprises to consider the use of business-grade cloud drive and collaboration solutions, such as Box and Huddle.
“These services deliver user-friendly, device-agnostic, content-sharing features similar to Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft SkyDrive, but they also feature management and administration capabilities that Ovum deems essential from a compliance and audit perspective,” says Edwards.