Google Workspace Price Increase: Finding the Best Cloud Storage Solution

Additional contributions to this blog were made by Brad Chase, Senior Director of Sales, SkySync

Following a late-2020 rebranding, Google recently announced price increases for its Workspace product. For many businesses, reducing costs was an important reason to consider products like Google Workspace (formerly GSuite) in the first place.

Now, with price increases taking effect, organizations may have a decision to make about Cloud storage providers. As prices change and limits on storage evolve, it’s easy to understand why businesses may be rethinking their options. While Google Workspace and Office 365 represent the two largest Cloud storage providers on the market, businesses may utilize several other providers such as Box or Dropbox, too.

Does it make sense to continue to utilize all of these services? Is migration the right path forward? The recent Google Workspace price increase may be driving migration thoughts for businesses, as they look to avoid potentially costly contract renewals.

Migrating to a Cloud Storage Platform

The COVID-19 pandemic shone a spotlight on the need for organizations to have collaboration and productivity tools at the ready, to support those in the office and those working remotely. Every business will have a choice to make when it comes to selecting a SaaS solution capable of driving seamless collaboration.

With costs rising, migrating to a more cost-effective Cloud storage solution is front of mind for many organizations. For some, this means eliminating redundancies and moving everything to a platform that may already be an option within the organization. Microsoft Office or Google products that go beyond file storage and sharing may already be in use, which provides the option to upgrade to Office 365 or Workspace more easily.

Comfort can end up playing the biggest role in the decision-making process. If installable apps are the biggest driver, Office 365 may be the best fit. Google Workspace, meanwhile, brings everything online with its browser-based approach.

Evolving workforces are accelerating enterprise organizations’ move to the Cloud, particularly the world of Cloud SaaS. Workspace, Office 365, and other Cloud offerings offer shared team storage and Cloud storage for remote workers to use more easily.

Finding the Right Cloud Storage Fit for Your Organization

In this day and age, every organization deserves a SaaS offering that delivers collaboration, business productivity, and streamlined communication. Since the turn of the century, Microsoft became well-known for providing organizations with on-premises technology stack solutions.

However, with the emergence of Cloud-hosted SaaS technology, vendors like Box, Dropbox, and Google capitalized. Business users no longer required IT-sanctioned solutions; they could embrace the most intuitive platform that helped them do their job. The multi-Cloud ecosystem took off.

With Office 365 subscriptions serving a core growth vertical for Microsoft, this loss in market share served as a wake-up call. Culturally, they shifted towards a customer-focused model that prioritized technology adoption and business stakeholder engagement beyond the IT department. Technologically, Microsoft prioritized OneDrive for Business enhancements and launched the innovative, unified collaboration product known as Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Office 365 carries a familiarity factor, as its suite of apps has been a favorite of on-premises offices for years. For enterprise organizations that have grown out of the need for Box and Dropbox, Office 365 is the Cloud SaaS solution that closely matches what everyone is used to from its on-premises capabilities.

Whether utilizing Office 365, Google Workspace, or another Cloud storage system, Thrive can assist with handling your storage solutions. Now is a great time to take a closer look at your data landscape, to see where redundancies can be found in an effort to avoid Cloud storage price increases. Not sure where to start? Get in touch with the Thrive team today.