Google Docs Storage for Your File Server

This week we received many calls from existing and prospective customers, all asking about the Google Docs for your file server use case. I thought it is interesting to have different customers/prospects asking the same thing. It could be a popular use case to write about.

The customers in particular are small companies with 5-10 people. They do not want to maintain an in house server and one even with mobile workers. All are on Gmail as their email infrastructure. They wanted to use Google Docs to share documents but they don’t want the clumsy web interface to slow down the upload/download process. In another word, they like the ability to share with employees from Google Docs but need direct desktop access for file transfer.

As long as Google Docs can serve and share folders and files and integrated into Windows Explorer for drag and drop, it fulfills the file server role as they desire.

This is a very good use case for Cloud Hero Desktop. www.cloudhero.com

First you can use Cloud Hero Desktop to map a Google Docs account into Windows Explorer as a virtual folder. The Cloud Hero program does this on the local PC automatically. The user sees another drive letter and just drags the files and folders to the drive and Cloud Hero loads them up to there Google Docs account - real simple and easy to do as users do this windows process every day.

When you are ready to share a folder with another employee, you can use Google Docs web interface to do so. For example, you can share a folder called "Downloads" to other employee or even customers.

The employee that you assigned a folder to (who your sharing with) will get an email message with a link to go directly to the file/folder.

So now everyone using the Google Docs/Cloud Hero combination can share the Downloads folder and use it as a file server.

To enhance the Google Docs experience Cloud Hero also does a 2-way sync of files (only software in the market that does this) so if any shared file is updated that your not aware of your PC gets a local copy automatically. Even if you update on a different PC any of your non-shared files at Google Docs, Cloud Hero will auto sync the files to your main PC so your always fully redundant with your files. Consider it a full backup of the cloud files.

If your company our you decide individually to move to a Google Apps for Business account ($50/year) you then can store at Google ANY FILE TYPE you have your not restricted to just Google Docs types of files. This set up allows you to store any file so you have a full backup system in place with a proven provider.