Google Drive is a very useful tool designed by Google, Inc. It enables users to create, share and collaborate data online and offline. Google offers an initial 15Gb free and additional storage may be purchased for a small cost. Data is saved online on a Google file server and it's readily available and accessible on the internet anywhere in the world. Google Drive also lets users save data on their computers, laptops and smart phones for offline access. Data stored offline can easily be synchronized with Google Drive online. More than 120 million people are using Google Drive worldwide.
Google Drive is not only a convenient way of sharing personal photos/videos and documents, it's also becoming a very cost-effective and efficient means of sharing data amongst small businesses. Using conventional method, businesses have to store their data on their own servers and share it with employees by means of file sharing and emails over their LAN. Safeguarding the data from external threats (i.e. theft, viruses, loss, etc.) is businesses own responsibility. Data in Google Drive is stored or highly sophisticated, very powerful and fast servers in a much secured location. All files are automatically scanned for viruses before they are shared with others.
It also takes up more storage space to share data via emails. For example, suppose there are 100 employees in a company. Company regularly shares meeting minutes, reports, presentations, etc. with its employees. IT department calculates that a minimum of 10GB is required for each employee to have a copy of these shared documents. Company will have to purchase 1TB storage space costing $1000 (including recurring costs of scanning, storage, backup, warehousing, time, etc.). If these documents, however, are shared on Google Drive, it may require only 10GB which is 100 times less than previously calculated storage space and will also reduce costs significantly.
