Today, almost everyone uses some form of cloud storage. If you use a photo service with cloud access, you are using cloud storage. Similarly, document storage tools like Google Cloud all use cloud storage. Almost every tool that helps us access our data or synchronize our files across multiple devices like phones, tablets and PCs uses cloud storage. With cloud storage now ubiquitous, can businesses also benefit from cloud storage? In most cases, the answer is yes. Cloud storage offers many unique advantages that make it a smart and more efficient data storage option for businesses, including the following benefits.
Over the last decade, cloud storage services have enjoyed tremendous success in the software world. Today, it is almost a necessity for every company, regardless of size, to use cloud storage to some degree. With its incredible potential, cloud technology has the capacity to completely revolutionize the way information is stored and transmitted.
What is Cloud Storage and What are the Benefits?
The enablement of the internet and the digitization of work environments continues to give us greater flexibility by removing restrictions such as location, time and device type on how and when we can access our data. Local data storage is limited by how it can be made accessible, whether through an individual computer’s hard drive or a network storage system such as a storage area network.
To create availability that can compete with cloud storage, local storage needs to be networked with network devices with a lot of capacity so that file transfer efficiency is consistent regardless of location. This infrastructure needs to be available and maintainable, never shutting down, with data security requirements in mind. As cloud storage increases data availability in our personal lives, we expect the same availability in our workplaces. Providing this accessibility can be costly, but economies of scale make it more cost-effective. Cloud storage has the advantage of scale, as cloud storage providers support many customers rather than a single organization.
To ensure availability at all times, the storage solution needs a high level of redundancy, not only to mitigate equipment failure and even manage disaster recovery situations, but also to cope with spikes in storage utilization. Achieving high levels of redundancy is a complex task. Redundancy needs to go beyond the physical storage environment and extend to servers, networks, power supplies and even data centers. Organizations also need to consider efficient data backup and recovery to reduce the risk of data corruption, while monitoring and detecting events that could impact data integrity. Cloud storage providers build redundancy into their services from the outset, as their entire business model depends on continuous availability. Cloud storage services also provide different levels of service depending on availability (and therefore redundancy).
What are Cloud Storage Providers?
A CSP (cloud service provider) is a third-party company that provides scalable computing resources, including cloud-based computing, storage, platform and application services, that businesses can access on demand over a network.
Cloud computing is becoming the go-to model for accelerating digital transformation and innovation, as it offers the flexibility, scalability, resilience and security that business demands require, without having to deal with the physical limitations of their own in-house servers or investing too much. Instead of building your own infrastructure for internal services and business applications like Google Cloud, you can lease services to share with other people or organizations using a CSP’s infrastructure.
In partnership with Google Cloud, one of the established leaders of the industry, we offer the most suitable services for your company’s needs. If you want to know how Global IT can help your business transition to cloud storage or optimize its use, don’t hesitate to contact us!
