- So last week I made a video
about how, when moving files from OneDrive to Google
Drive caused me an issue because Google Drive doesn't
do this nifty feature that the OneDrive has
called Files on Demand. A couple of people
commented that I was using the wrong Google Drive app, and well who'd have known
it, but they were right. So, I thought this week was
pretty timely to do a video on a bit of a comparison between
Google, Microsoft, Apple, Dropbox, since they're
probably the most well known file syncing apps out there. There are also others like
Amazon and Azure files but as those typically
get a lot more involved, I thought we stick to
just those for today, but I might touch on
them very, very briefly. (upbeat music) Anyway, so to keep this fair, we're gonna address each
service purely based on the storage service offering. We're not gonna get into the intricacies of 365 versus G Suite. We'll also address a few
key areas for each product. Pricing, user experience, sharing, backup or retention, data sovereignty, and reliability/uptime. So firstly, let's talk Microsoft. (upbeat music) On a personal level, you
can get five gig for free, you can upgrade to 100 gig for 1.99 or pay 59.99 per year for
one terabyte of space. On the business side of
things, you get one terabyte, OneDrive with most of the paid for plans. And since you're already
likely already subscribed to Office 365 then, you already have this at no additional cost. Now in terms of accessing the OneDrive, the app runs pretty much on anything. Mac, Windows, mobile, even on platforms like Microsoft Xbox. So a couple of things I like about this, it's a single app for personal and business OneDrive accounts, and you can sign into multiple
accounts without any issues. Their Files on Demand feature,
which I mentioned last week, which only downloads files
that you've recently accessed to save your space on your machine. Multiple people can work on the same files at the same time and see
edits live and platforms like Microsoft Power Automate can be used to totally automate the creation
and movement of your files. A few things I don't like,
well with Files on Demand you can't choose how
long to keep the files. I'd love to be able to
set say, 7 days or 30 days before the files are then
removed from the cache locally to save you space, but actually none of the
apps have that feature. So it's not really specific to OneDrive. Now the biggest bug bear
I have with OneDrive is their maximum file size
limit, which is 15 gig. Because sometimes these video files I produce are 60 gig, nice. Now when it comes to sharing, as you'd expect of course,
you can share the files and folders with anybody,
internal, external, and yes, keynote here, those
without a Microsoft account can even edit the documents. You can also set a date
for when access expires and you can also set a password to access which is a pretty neat
feature for security. Now, as far as backups go, as I've mentioned in
plenty of my other videos, Office 365 is not backed up. Now Microsoft even state this
in their terms and conditions when you go and sign up. That you need to find a
third party backup tool to backup your data. So whilst, yes you might
have a copy of the data on your machine, which is then also stored in the Microsoft Cloud. This doesn't protect you
from deleting something accidentally and not realising
until six months later, at which point it's too late. The file has gone forever
to the dusty graveyard of the discarded Word and Excel files. Probably also where
the Microsoft Paperclip has gone to rest. Now for data sovereignty, you can check where your data is stored, by going to the Office 365 Admin Centre, you go to Settings, Organisation
profile, Data Location, but generally speaking, if
you signed up for Office 365 in the UK, then your data
will be stored in the UK. In other news, only a
few selected 365 services are stored outside of the UK. So follow the link in the comments below, to see what those services might be. Also a point of note here, Microsoft offer their Multi-Geo service where your data can be localised, where it needs to be
on an individual basis, is only offered to companies
with over 500 seats. So if you truly are a global organisation and you need your data
sovereignty to be localised around the globe then, that's
a good feature for you. And I actually applaud Microsoft
for giving administrators the choice and visibility here, whilst most online storage
services will be the likes of GDPR, PCI, DSS, and ISO compliance. There is still a hurdle
that some business owners struggle with when they
know that their data is physically located in the US. Raises questions over the U.S. government having access to their data,
even behind all of the strict regulations and all of their compliance. Onto reliability, and what I've done here is I've done a Google
new search for outages for each of these products. On the 2nd of May 2019, there
was a three hour outage. On the 30th of January 2019,
there was a four hour outage. There was another four hour outage on the 29th of November in 2018, and then we're right back to March 2017. On to Google this time. (upbeat music) This is what caught me out before. So Google's products, which
is named Google Drive, which you still access by
browsing to drive.google.com, used to use the application
called Google Drive. And in fact, you can still
download the Google Drive app on your mobile device. On Mac and PC you don't
download Google Drive anymore. You used to, you now download
either Google Backup and Sync, or if you're a business user, you can also download Google
Drive File Stream, simple. So there in lies my first issue. Akin to Microsoft's recent rebrand of their Microsoft Flow platform to Microsoft Power Automates,
yet lots of literature and URLs still talk about Microsoft Flow. Except, Google launched their
Drive File Stream in 2017, two and a half years ago, yet they still don't
seem to have their name standardised across the board. Thus the confusion in my previous video. With that aside, personally,
you get 15 gig for free, which is pretty cool. A hundred gig for 15.99 a year, so cheaper than Microsoft OneDrive. 200 gig four 24 pounds a year, two terabytes for 79.99 a year, and that goes right up to 10,
20, 30 terabytes of storage. Now from a business
perspective on G Suite, you can pay four pound
60 per user per month for 30 gig of cloud Storage. And then from nine pounds, 20, upwards on their plans, you get unlimited cloud storage, providing you have more than five users, which is a shame, but I
guess it stops people like me abusing the free storage. Again, you may have already
been subscribed to G Suite for your email and other features. So this could be something
that you already have at no additional cost. Once you've got your
head around the different client applications, is
actually pretty good. With Google Backup and Sync,
you can back up folders outside of your Google Drive folder, so your desktops or your download folders. But this client stores
everything on your machine, unless you specifically
don't sync certain folders, meaning you either need to use
the web client to get access or a massive hard drive to
store everything locally. Over to Google File Stream, it works in a very
similar way to OneDrive. Files stay in the cloud
until you access them, then they download and
store them on your machine, while you're accessing them, and then get cached for a little while. And then in terms of
using multiple accounts, again, confusion strikes. Whilst I was successful in
adding two Google accounts, into Google Backup and Sync, which essentially runs
two separate instances in the task bar on my Mac. A post on the Google Forum states, that you can sign into up
to three Google Accounts at the same time, yet
literally the line below that, it states that there
isn't a built in feature to use two accounts at the same time. On the other hand with Google File Stream, you can't use multiple accounts. You can only use just the one. So from a cost perspective,
the fact that you get unlimited storage for a
relatively low monthly price, means that as a pure file storage, Google Drive so far
wins the debate for me. When it comes to sharing of course, you can share internally, and externally with the caveats. If the person you're sending to doesn't have a Google account, they can only view the
files, they can't edit them. So Microsoft and OneDrive
has a bit of a one-up on Google here, but a
counter to that is likely, who doesn't have a Google
Account of some form nowadays? Worth noting here, you can
also change permissions for sharing externally from
an administrative level, to prevent people sharing
outside of the company, if you wish, as you can with OneDrive. As far as backups come,
once again, the same story, Google Drive is not backed up. But outside of that
they have a short window of 25 to 30 days for being
able to actually recover any deleted files. Data sovereignty, now Google
doesn't provide any facility to choose or determine where
your actual data is located. They state that their data is replicated throughout multiple
locations for resiliency. So they're not as
transparent as Microsoft, but just reminder that both Microsoft and Google's offerings are
fully compliant with the likes of GDPR and PCI DSS, Healthcare,
and other regulations, of course with that said,
you best double check with any specifics if you
need to be legally compliant. One thing just to note
here as well I noticed, is that Google doesn't provide their Data Processing Amendments, or the Model Contract Clauses, for anyone not using the
business G Suite platform. Onto reliability, so
according to my research, there was an outage on
the 27th of January, that lasted for around one hour. On the 19th of August
2019, for around two hours. On the 17th of April 2019,
for around two hours. On the 13th of March 2019,
for around four hours. Now over to Dropbox. (upbeat music) So Dropbox personal plans,
get you two terabytes of space for 7.99 a month, or three
terabytes for 16.58 per month. On the business side of
things, is 10 pounds per month, for a minimum of three users, and you get five terabytes of space. And then it's 15 pounds per user per month for a minimum again of three
users with unlimited space. Which is a shame again,
if you're a single user, or only a couple of users wanting access to the business features, because you're forced
to pay for three users. Sharing wise, you can
share externally of course, and similar to others, a caveat
that if you share a folder that's being accessed by multiple people, then the other end will
need to sign up for at least a free Dropbox account. Otherwise they'll only be able to download and view the files. Now from a backup and
recovery perspective, the personal two terabyte
plan gets you 30 days actual backup and version history. And the three terabyte plan has 180 days. But all of the business
plans also have 180 days, which is miles better than Microsoft, or Google, anybody so far. So thumbs up to Dropbox. Dropbox also has Smart Sync which is their version of
only downloading the files that you need to store locally, and this is only available on their Plus, professional and business accounts. So personal accounts, you
don't get this feature. Onto data sovereignty, with Dropbox again, it's the likes of ISO and GDPR compliance, but you don't get to choose
where your data is located, unless you have 15 users or
more, where you can specify their EU-based data hosting service. Otherwise data is stored
primarily in the US but also in Germany, Australia and Japan. Onto outages, so on June the sixth 2019, there was a two hour outage. And to be honest, that's
actually all of the ones that appeared in the Google News feeds, when I searched for the
exact same search terms as all the others. So make of that, what you will I guess. (upbeat music) Lastly, we have Amazon
AWS, which I'll touch on, it's worth a mention. Pricing wise, it is far too
difficult to go into here. But depending on your use case, I see AWS as probably being
the most affordable storage of all really. For example, I use a
Mac-based security CCTV system called Security Spy and that has a feature that copies the CCTV footage into AWS. I currently have half a terabyte in AWS, and I'm paying less than
two dollars per month. Now the issue here is their
pricing takes into account so many other factors, the
storage space you need, the number of transfers in,
number of transfers out, archive glacier storage. So, so many options, but
it's cheap, very, very cheap. So it makes a great place
to store backup files or files that you don't really
need to access that often. Onto user experience,
and this is where Amazon falls down of course. And yes, because this isn't... This is really targeted at
businesses and not consumers. But you also have to do a bit
of digging to find clients that allow you easy access to your data via say, a Mac Drive or
FTP server or so forth. Nothing quite like the
experience of just signing in with your username and password
like everything else does. Backup up retention. So, using AWS, you can
also specify backups and configure them as
often as you require. But again, this requires a
fairly decent level of knowledge on how to browse around the AWS Console, but it certainly gives
you the best options compared to the other providers. On to data sovereignty, as with Microsoft, when you create your storage pools, you can specify where you
want them to be stored. So they check the boxes here too. Now onto reliability. 22nd of October 2019, there
was an eight hour outage, August 31st 2019, an outage in the US was another eight hour outage. February 2017, there was
a circa three hour outage in the U.S. Other than this, there are
generally multiple outages per year before this. And they seem to be fairly dramatic that they're off for
hours rather than the one or two hours we see with
lots of the other services. But then it is very affordable. And if you're just
looking for storing files that you don't often need
access to like my CCTV, or archive data, then
outages likely aren't really a big deal to us. (upbeat music) The last one to get an honourable mention, would of course be Apple's
own iCloud storage. 200 gig for 2.49 a month. Two terabytes for 6.99 a month. User experience is probably
where Apple would win here, but only of course, if
you're on an Apple device. It seamlessly integrates with all aspects of the Apple Ecosystem from
your photos, videos, music, backing up your mobile devices, it's just so easy to get to your data. Credit where credit is due,
part of Apple's whole existence is around just making sure
everything just works. And they do succeed at this in many areas. When it comes to back up,
this is where it gets tricky. In a nutshell, it is
difficult to near impossible to reliably and automatically
back up the contents of your iCloud storage. There are also no clearly
documented retention periods for how long Apple will
store deleted files. So in the event of
accidentally deleting something and only realising a few months later, you'll have pretty much little to no options to recover. With Apple you never know precisely where your data actually is. In 2018 Apple disclosed
that their data is stored on both Amazon and Google's commercial cloud storage systems. So that could cover anywhere effectively. Now if we take a look at the reliability and uptime for iCloud, well, since iCloud sits on
the back of other platforms, it's a similar story to the above. Research shows multiple
outages throughout 2019 in May, June, July, October, a four hour outage in
March, one in December, and that's just on the first page of the Google search results. So likely not the most reliable to use as your primary means of storage. As to which services
best of all of the above? Well, it depends is the answer. If you're looking for cheap storage that you don't mind getting a hands on, or rather fingers dirty
in learning how to connect you to your data, then
AWS, hands down I'd say. If you're in the Office
365 Ecosystem already, OneDrive makes perfect sense,
as does the Google Drive or File Sync and Recover Stream thing, if you're a G Suite user, Dropbox does seem the general
go to for many business users, but that, I think is mostly down to people not realising you have
storage at your fingertips in Google Drive or Office 365. So you could actually
look to save some money by moving your data from Dropbox over to one of those existing services. With Apple, well, personally
I wouldn't store anything business related on it, unless of course your
whole business operates from the Apple ecosystem. Your iPhones, Macs, the lot, but even then sharing
becomes quite difficult. So that is pretty much
everything for this week. A quick overview of all the platforms, hope you have not done anyone a disservice by saying the wrong thing
about the wrong products. Most of this is based on
my experience of using each of the platforms and
some quick researching online. For those interested, so we obviously use Office
365 heavily, within Tekkers. We have a lot of our
data stored in Office 365 in SharePoint and OneDrive. Personally, I actually have my files in a G Suite business account for my personal side of things. So I'm moving as I said previously, moving my data into there. And yeah, I have positive
things to say about both Google and 365. So there is no Office 365
versus G Suite thing here. They both got their own positives, both got some drawbacks, and yeah, I'll leave it to you to
make your own decisions. Thanks as always for watching. Of course like the video if you did, subscribe
if you're not already, hit the bell icon on YouTube to be notified of our future videos, and I'll see you in the next one. Thank you, bye bye. (upbeat music)
