IT administrators have struggled in recent months with allowing consumer cloud storage services behind their firewalls because the offerings lack administrative controls, such as the ability to securely collaborate through encrypted documents, remotely delete files and control who can access what. In more recent months, consumer-oriented services such as and with its Dropbox for Teams, have begun adding those capabilities.

Cloud-based backup services such as Mozy and Carbonite have also made strides in the business market.

"From Google's perspective, what I think is important to point out is they're going to need to develop those levels of control, which will be attractive to an IT organization," Nisbet said. "I think that's what's becoming more appealing to the IT organizations in all types of businesses. They want to maintain a level of control."

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .

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