Day 45 — Chillin’ in the cloud
Transitioning from Dropbox to Drive
Creating a Single Source of Truth
One of the gaps I identified early in this work was how we manage sensitive data— specifically, our files. As a result of how we’ve grown, I was storing data and files across 3 main accounts:
- Personal Gmail: Before Invincible was even a thing, I was using my personal Google Drive account to keep my expenses down.
- Personal Dropbox: Then I started using my personal Dropbox account — mainly because I liked the product.
- Invincible GDrive: Then Invincible became real and I created a company account — mainly to manage Google Drive documents and mail.
As a result, it was a real mess — especially when considering data security over ease of access to documents.
Transitioning to Google Drive
So I started to clean it up. It ended up being a LOT more work than I thought…my initial goal was just to upgrade our Dropbox account. But after realizing the ongoing challenge this would create, I elected to create a single source of truth. Which meant consolidating 3 massive storage structures.
I elected for Google Drive because I knew I’d be using it no matter what for accessing Google Sheets, Mail, and other data. Sticking with Google also helps with overall access control rights and gives us a place to store PHI if needed (since we’ve signed a BAA).
The main costs were the upfront organization efforts, potential loss of functionality from Dropbox to drive, and the financial costs of $12/user (which honestly seems pretty reasonable at this point).
It took a few days to complete, but I’m hopeful that long term it will make our lives much easier by creating a single access control point.
Full breakdown of Drive vs. Dropbox here.
What’s Next?
Tomorrow I will be transitioning our data off of Hubspot.
