New Research Finds that Workers Use Average of 6.3 File Silos

Workers today use an average of 6.3 “file silos” including email apps, network drives, cloud storage, and hosted collaboration suites where documents are stored, according to a new survey by enterprise file search software startup Cloudtenna.

The survey addressed modern work habits around the use of repositories by employees from a range of enterprises such as media, education, retail, and professional services.

OneDrive and Google Drive were the most popular cloud file storage services, used by 53% each, with Dropbox used by 45%, followed by Box at 32%.

The survey found that email applications are used as an ersatz file repository, with 74% of respondents using Outlook, followed by Gmail which is the next-most used at 40%.

Among enterprise collaboration and sharing tools, Slack is currently the most popular with 22% of respondents using it in their workplace, followed by Salesforce at 18%, Jira at  17%, and Confluence  at 16%.

Only 38% of workers said they rely on network drives and servers for files, though 12%  said their files are spread fairly equally across all repositories without heavy reliance on one more than another.

With so many file silos in use, Cloudtenna said more than 15% of workers described finding files as challenging and 63% said it is sometimes difficult.

For more information about Cloudtenna, whose DirectSearch tool is now in beta, visit www.cloudtenna.com.