Google is introducing pooled storage and shared drives to its Workspace Business Starter plan to help SMBs.
Designed to enable smaller businesses and startups to scale quickly, Google Workspace Business Starter previously only offered 30GB of storage per user. Pooled storage means that capacity is shared across a business, offering more flexibility and the capability to leaders and streamlining the workload of admins monitoring storage usage.
A Google blog post wrote:
Pooled storage provides a more simple and flexible way to manage storage, as all storage is shared across the organization, removing the need to manage it on a per-user basis. With pooled storage, admins also have more tools to monitor how storage is used across their organization."
Pooled storage will now be available for new customers signing up for Business Starter. In contrast, existing Business Starter customers will begin transitioning to pooled storage starting next week, a process that will take several months.
Business Starter customers will also introduce shared drives — to which organizations can add members, files, and folders — in an attempt to reduce friction and save time and resources around collaboration and file sharing.
Google added that Business Starter customers would be able to access their shared drives anywhere and on any device while saying that files would be more easily discoverable as they are all based in one centralized service. All files are permanent, regardless of if a user were to leave the business, while every member of a drive can collaborate in the same file at once.
"Part of empowering our customers to do their best work means reducing the friction around file sharing and collaboration," the blog wrote. "Shared drives are a key tool for collaboration — users can store, search, and access their team's files instantly."
However, specific admin-level and security controls will not be included in shared drives for Business Starter, with Google citing the capability to control access to the items in a shared drive as an example.
