For those people who use the free version of Google (@gmail.com), it’s understandable that you may not like Google Drive: if you don’t want to use Google’s own apps like Docs, Sheets or Slides, you are left with manually uploading and downloading documents to and from your Drive account and versioning isn’t easy. Many of you may even use a Dropbox account (which has its own problems) just to avoid Drive.

But with a Digital Workspace Solution subscription, all that pain goes away. The paid business offering makes Drive look and feel just like a native folder. If you are a Windows user, then Google Drive conveniently takes over the available G: drive letter. If you are a Mac user, then it lives in your Home directory.

And once in your computer, magical things happen!

Google Drive looks and acts like a native drive volume.

• You can store any file or folder in your Drive–Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDFs, JPGs, Autocad, Photoshop, Illustrator, whatever your software, Drive will store it and without that finicky upload and download thing.
• You want to open a Drive file, you double click it. You want to save a Drive file, you just click Ctrl-S (or the Mac equivalent).
• Anything in your drive file is magically stored in the cloud. Anything you double click to open is magically downloaded from the cloud and opened with its native application.
• Google Drive stores “Shared Drives” (parent folders that you share with other team members) along with your “My Drive” (containing files that you don’t need to share) so that you can manage both team files and documents that aren’t ready for everyone to see.
• Open a shared file that someone else is working on and you get a notification that you’re not working alone on it. But if you still want to work on it, Google will download it and open it for you; this isn’t Microsoft SharePoint after all.

In fact, you can even remove your “My Documents” directory and replace it with “My Drive” (as I’ve done in the attached screenshot. Because “My Documents” isn’t automatically backed up to the cloud, why would anyone store their critical documents there?

And with Google’s Business level account, you have between 1 Tb and an unlimited amount of data to use for your Digital Workspace.

If versioning is a concern for you, we can also add a backup solution so that your entire corporate G Suite account is backed up up to three times daily. That way, even if someone edits something they shouldn’t, or uses a document as a template for a new customer without renaming it first, we can recover your lost work.

If you want an easy, convenient way to manage your corporate documents or you’re concerned about the safety of your documents, then Google G Suite might be the answer for you. Check out our Digital Workspace White Paper or contact us for a free conversation about how Google can help keep your company safe.