Microsoft SkyDrive online backup storage Overview

Security: For companies with compliance concerns — HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley or Payment Card Industry — it’s difficult to see how SkyDrive could create anything other than a headache. While SkyDrive is SSL- and password-protected (although it allows simultaneous sign-ons with the same ID across multiple systems), it lacks other control features that even a small business would seek to keep tabs on sensitive data. Microsoft needs to make a stronger security statement with online applications like SkyDrive (perhaps a free, ready and easy to use encryption function?) before even small businesses can think about warming up to it.

Capacity: At 5 GB of free storage, it’s more than most USB thumb drives but much less than higher-capacity USB storage devices sold through the channel by companies like Seagate and Western Digital. And Western Digital’s Passport drives, for example, are both mobile and offer encryption support. SkyDrive does have enough capacity to store big PowerPoint presentations or other multi-media files, though it’s not really big enough to act as a personal file warehouse.

Collaboration: This is one of two areas where SkyDrive is impressive. The service allows creation of shared folders on the fly which could be a help in a dynamic, workgroup scenario. SkyDrive also allows creation of public folders, where content can be shared with everyone on the Internet; that allows for interesting potential in marketing or online publishing solutions.

Interoperability: This is another area where SkyDrive impresses. In the Test Center, a Word 2003 document uploaded to SkyDrive on a Windows Vista-based PC was easily shared, downloaded, and viewed in OpenOffice 2.3 Writer on a virtual PC running Ubuntu Linux. It’s actually easier to share documents, cross-platform, via SkyDrive than it is via Word in Microsoft’s heralded Office Live online service.

Management: There are no central management capabilities. On an individual basis, users can create folders for specific file types, make those folders private, shared with a limited group or made fully public.

Performance: Eh. During testing, an upload of a 1.25 GB movie file took more than a half hour with slightly more than 7 Mbps of bandwidth. (Actually, testing was halted at 30 minutes even before the file had successfully uploaded.) Transferring that same file from the PC’s hard drive to a Western Digital Passport, USB-connected drive, with 160 GB of capacity, took one minute and 45 seconds. So even if a content-filter isn’t deployed to halt the use of SkyDrive in an enterprise, Microsoft’s own performance might have the same effect.

As a VAR, if you have a client that is going to readily opt for freebie, low-performance, low-security storage like SkyDrive, you probably don’t have high hopes for that client. For now, though, keep this in mind as free, non-enterprise online storage proliferates and some begin to think it’s a good idea: Is the marginal benefit to even a small business even worth the risk?

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