Nonetheless, here goes:
When I talk to many small business owners about online services, they want to talk about their documents. The common requirements tend to include:
1. Be able to have quick and reliable access to their documents
2. Access the documents from everywhere
3. Share documents with business partners
4. Do all of this in a very secure manner.
So basically they want to have their cake and eat it too.
The discussion inevitably guides itself towards online document storage. Google Docs, Windows Live, etc. It seems perfect: Your documents are available from anywhere, you can share them with others, and it's relatively easy.
So I ask: Why don't you sign up then?
The answer varies from: "Well, you know Google is indexing my documents." to "I don't want Microsoft holding all of my docs." to "I don't trust those sons of a *gun*!"
So, the short answer: TRUST
My question for providers of online document storage: How do you convince your clients that
a) Their data is safe from intruders?
b) Their data is safe from you?
c) Their data is safe from system failure?
Further thoughts that I may write about later include providing a service to your clients that's seamless, flexible, and secure.
In the mean time, any thoughts are welcome.
I've used Google Docs. Should I be scared that my data isn't safe?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, any time you're choosing your data storage method, you have to ask yourself these questions:
ReplyDelete1. Is it "safe enough"? ie. If someone would get unauthorized access to your data, what would be the consequences?
2. With Google Docs, anyone just a guessed password away from your data. Is your password strong and secure or is it the same password that you've been using since Wham! was popular?
3. Do you trust Google? Some will answer 'yes' to this and some 'no'. It's a personal choice.
So that's a long-winded "it depends" answer. Hope it helps.
Okay, so how do you feel about storing stuff on dropbox?
ReplyDeleteDropbox is definitely one of the better solutions that I've seen. Without knowing too much about the technology behind it, it definitely meets criteria 1-3 that I listed in the article. The automatic synchronization coupled with web-based accessibility is exactly the path that I was going down.
ReplyDeleteI would have to dig in further to see what kind of security they offer to determine whether I would call their solution "secure".
All in all, they appear to be on the right track as far as Online Data Storage goes because they've covered the usability and sharability requirements.