There is a monster debate raging in MVP circles about OneDrive, OneDrive for Business (ODB) and \u201cissues\u201d that surround ODB.\u00a0 The big thrust of the debate surrounds the sync technology in ODB and how it works.\u00a0 A secondary debate rages about the fact that ODB offers 1TB of storage per user against the substantially smaller amount of storage offered in SharePoint Online.<\/p>\n
At the risk of starting a possible flame war, it strikes me that the debate starts from an incorrect assumption; that assumption being that SharePoint and ODB (which is SharePoint, after all) are a direct replacement<\/em> for on-prem file servers.\u00a0 After working with Sean, Colin and Keith (our SharePoint MVP\u2019s) for the past 6 years, I\u2019ve learned that treating SharePoint in this fashion is quite possibly the worst <\/em>thing that you can possibly do!\u00a0 Now, I realize this may sound completely batty but bear with me for a bit while I explain my reasoning.<\/p>\n File servers have become big unwieldy beasts because people don\u2019t think<\/em> about the stuff they throw on to the server.\u00a0 One use files build and build and build causing storage to grow and grow and grow.\u00a0 I\u2019d be willing to bet that 80 \u2013 90% of the files on any given file server are \u201cjunque\u201d, to put it politely.\u00a0 Of course sysadmins can impose quota limits on the amount of storage used by any given individual but there is no real \u201ccontrol\u201d other than that.\u00a0 Ultimately, the file server just becomes a big \u201cdata soak\u201d.\u00a0 And while there is some search ability built into Windows it is pretty basic when compared to the search ability in SharePoint.\u00a0 In other words, for the most part, files servers are unstructured.\u00a0 This is a lousy<\/em> environment to emulate in the Cloud in general and O365 in particular.<\/p>\n SharePoint and ODB offer many mechanisms to manage data including (but not limited too) versioning, metadata (for search), lists, libraries and forms.\u00a0 I believe the true value to any organization of SharePoint and ODB is to leverage the tools and capabilities within the products to manage data in a much smarter way than just the mish-mash of a fileserver.\u00a0 At itgroove we actively advocate against <\/em>using import tools to \u201cslurp\u201d the contents of fileservers into SharePoint and I\u2019ll go out on a limb and extend that to advocating against slurping your home drive, or whatever, into your OBD.\u00a0 I\u2019ll also advocate against using (or, at least, relying on) the OBD sync client as I think it promotes continuing \u201cbad habits\u201d.\u00a0 I think Microsoft has painted themselves into a corner with the sync client (and I know I\u2019ll get flamed over that) because they have blurred what OBD and the personal OneDrive do.<\/p>\n From my perspective, the personal OneDrive is your personal \u201cfileserver\u201d in the Cloud.\u00a0 It is unstructured, just like a fileserver, so you can treat it as such.\u00a0 And it has a sync client that works well because it doesn\u2019t have to deal with a SharePoint backend.\u00a0 ODB, on the other hand, from my perspective should always <\/em>be accessed from a browser and the tools should always be leveraged.\u00a0 Make sure the metadata is updated, use versioning,\u00a0 manage <\/em>your data.\u00a0 And organizations need to think long and hard about what data they believe should be \u201coffloaded\u201d into user\u2019s OBD\u2019s.\u00a0 This is the core of my argument.<\/p>\n The lure of 1TB OBD storage has many organizations looking for ways to put data into user\u2019s OBD\u2019s rather than into the \u201cmain\u201d SharePoint datastore within O365 which has considerably smaller storage allocations.\u00a0 But when framed within my argument that data needs to be properly managed, <\/em>offloading organizational data into OBD makes little sense.\u00a0 It makes more sense, from my point of view, to look at the tools within SharePoint and consider other, better ways to manage your data.\u00a0 Perhaps some InfoPath forms and backend lists can replace reams of one-use Excel files.\u00a0 Maybe versioning can do a better job of managing the various iterations of your Office files.\u00a0 Maybe libraries and workflows can better manage some business processes.\u00a0 In other words, the data and the job that it performs should be analyzed and then mapped into\/against SharePoint using the best available tool for the job.<\/p>\n SharePoint and OBD really make lousy file servers (have I said that already???) so don\u2019t treat them as such.\u00a0 If you leverage the tools properly your actual data storage use will be considerably smaller than you think; certainly much smaller than the storage use on an unstructured file server.\u00a0 And a bonus will be overall better control (and security and management) of your organizational data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"