There is a machine in the corner of your studio that barely gets mentioned in meetings. Not the workstation on your desk, or the laptop on the shelf. The file server. The one you set up when the team grew, the one that holds the finished renders, the Revit files, the InDesign packages that are too large for email. It hums. You mostly ignore it. And it is still switched on because nothing you moved to the cloud has quite replaced it.
If that sounds familiar, you are in good company. A lot of creative studios have Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 running well for email, calendars and shared documents. What they do not have is a cloud answer for the rest: the production files, the video, the project archives. Drive and OneDrive handle the documents. The heavy lifting still lives on the NAS in the server room.
What Google and Microsoft are actually built for
Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are excellent at what they were designed for: real-time co-editing, email, calendars, chat and everyday document sharing. Most studios should keep them and keep using them for exactly that.
The trouble starts when a business assumes that because Drive or SharePoint holds its documents, it can also hold its entire media estate. A busy studio carries hundreds of gigabytes of active project files, tens of thousands of folders and individual assets that run to several gigabytes each. That is a different shape of problem from a shared spreadsheet, and it is not the problem Drive or OneDrive were built to solve.
Where the gap shows up
The mismatch surfaces in predictable ways, and most studios hit more than one of them.
Large files and deep folders
Drive for Desktop and OneDrive sync were designed for documents, not a 40,000-file project archive. At studio scale the sync clients slow down, conflict copies appear and someone loses an afternoon working out which version is current.
Mac users treated as an afterthought
Google and Microsoft build Windows first. On a Mac fleet that shows up as Finder integration that fights you, sync that behaves differently to Windows and features that arrive late or not at all. For a mixed fleet, the friction adds up.
External sharing that actually works
A freelancer needs one project folder for two weeks and nothing else. A client needs to drop 8 GB of source material. Doing that through a tangle of Drive links, personal Dropbox accounts and WeTransfer is how files end up scattered and permissions end up a mess.
Governance and early warning
When files are spread across sync clients and shared links, nobody can say with confidence who has access to which client folder. For studios under content security obligations, or pursuing Cyber Essentials, that lack of visibility is a real problem.
What Egnyte adds
Egnyte is built for the shape of problem cloud-first platforms were not. It handles large files and deep folder trees without the sync instability. It gives Mac users proper Finder integration that behaves consistently alongside Windows, rather than as an afterthought. External sharing works per folder, with real access controls and an audit trail, so work comes in and goes out without leaving copies scattered across personal accounts.
Because everything sits in one governed platform, you also get visibility you do not get from a pile of shared links: who can see what, where files have gone externally and unusual access patterns that can flag a ransomware event before it spreads. For any studio handling client material under contract, that level of control is worth having.
The other thing worth noting: Egnyte plugs into the Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 environment you already run. It is an addition to your setup, not a rebuild of it. Your team carries on working the way they do now and the file layer underneath gets stronger.
For Business-PRO clients, setting up and managing Egnyte sits inside the managed service. Rubicon handles the configuration, the user permissions and the ongoing oversight so you do not have to work out how to run it.
Being straight about the cost
Egnyte is not free, and there is no point pretending otherwise. It is a paid platform that sits on top of the Google or Microsoft licences you already pay for.
It earns that cost when the need is genuine: large file performance, a Mac-heavy fleet, constant external collaboration with freelancers and clients and proper governance across the lot. If your file estate is small and lives happily in Drive already, you probably do not need it.
One practical point: Egnyte's performance depends on your upload speed. If your office connection has a weak uplink, that is worth addressing first.
How to know if this is you
A few signs that your cloud platform has not actually replaced your file server:
- The file server or NAS is still switched on and the important project work still lives there
- Mac users complain that Drive or OneDrive is slow or keeps dropping files
- Freelancers get access through a mix of shared links and personal accounts
- Clients send large files by WeTransfer because there is nowhere sensible to put them
- Nobody can say with confidence who has access to which client folder
If you recognise three or more of those, the gap is real and it is quietly costing time every week.
The right tool for the file
This was never Egnyte against Google or Microsoft. It is the right tool for the file. Keep Workspace or 365 for the email and documents they handle so well, and stop forcing your media estate into a tool built for spreadsheets and attachments.
The file server in the corner is a workaround. There is a cleaner answer, and it does not mean throwing away what already works.
Not sure whether your studio has outgrown Drive or SharePoint? Rubicon will go through your file estate and tell you honestly whether Egnyte makes sense for you.
Want to see Egnyte in action first? Rubicon runs product demos for studios and practices considering the move.