How the Cloud can Increase Business Collaboration

​Business collaboration is critical to the efficiency and productivity of businesses. There are many cloud apps that are designed to help businesses with their collaboration. The top two cloud apps for business collaboration are Dropbox for Business and Google Apps. Dropbox boasts over 8 million business customers, while Google Apps has over 5 million business customers. There are other  cloud apps that are useful for collaboration as well, including SharePoint, Evernote, OneNote, Basecamp, and more, but for this article, we will stick with the top two.

​Google Apps
 
Google Drive powers the collaboration features of Google Apps, and it is a powerful collaboration feature indeed. Up to 50 users can simultaneously collaborate on the same file. All users have to do is access the document via a shared link from any web browser, and they can start editing immediately. Unlike with Dropbox, there is no software to install, as everything is done in the cloud.
 
Dropbox
 
Dropbox has a little more complicated collaboration features, and if you're not careful, you may end up with several different copies of the same file. But as long as everyone is one the same page, and understands what they are editing, it typically goes very smoothly to have multiple people editing the same file.
 
The difference is that Dropbox uses shared folders as collaborative tools instead of an actual file in the cloud. When part of the document is revised, Dropbox only uploads the part of the document that was changed, and leaves the rest of the document alone. This differs from Google Drive, which re-uploads the entire file every time a revision is made.
 
Cloud-to-cloud integration
 
Many companies use cloud storage as part of their company-wide file sharing and collaboration plan. As mentioned above, the two top collaborative cloud services for businesses are Dropbox for Business and Google Apps. The problem is, some team members within a company use Dropbox, while others use Google Apps. This results in some issues when team members are trying to collaborate on the same document. But there are some third-party services that actually help integrate one cloud service to another, so that team members that using Google Apps can collaborate on the same file at the same time with team members using Dropbox. One such service is cloudHQ, a cloud integration service that makes it simple for team members using different cloud services to collaborate flawlessly.
 
Worldwide collaboration
 
The cloud has brought collaboration to an entirely new level. As a result of those technological advances, companies can now collaborate on files with team members all over the world, and by using a cloud integration app, they don't even have to be using the same cloud service. This results in maximum company productivity, and paves the way for more remote workers to be hired.