It wasn’t so long ago that most business owners had little idea what “cloud” means in the context of the online world, but now just about everyone has some basic notion that it’s the digital equivalent of outsourcing.
Even so, it’s still something that many people are a little fuzzy on, particularly when it comes to business implementation. What do companies need to do regarding the cloud? Where is the hype justified, and where is it more of a diversion from what really matters?
These are reasonable questions, so let’s clear up one thing: cloud storage certainly matters. In fact, it doesn’t just matter: it’s actually a must-have for businesses in 2020, whether they’re getting heavily involved in big data or simply trying to keep their work files in order. Here’s why:
It provides greatly-improved security
When they think about storing files online, people can worry about security, imagining the awful consequences of their passwords being brute-forced — but what they forget is that they protect their local storage in the same way, only on systems that aren’t as heavily guarded and using drives that could fail at any time. It’s actually enormously more secure to use cloud storage, particularly through a full cloud solution distributor like intY, a Scan Source Company with a tight-knit ecosystem. All you need to do is follow best password practices, and everything else is handled on your behalf.
It’s significantly cheaper than the alternative
The same idea that drives people to save up to buy property instead of renting can lead them to think it’s better to buy their data storage as well. That way they own it, they reason, and can start to save money once they’ve been in use for long enough. But hard drive technology isn’t static, meaning businesses should upgrade their drives from time to time and must buy fresh drives to do so. Once you buy new ones, you need to protect your business by ensuring that the sensitive data stored on your discarded hard drives can never be accessed. Getting help from a hard drive destruction company is the only way to completely remove all traces of data from a hard drive. And then there’s the matter of scaling.
How much storage space do you need? One month you might need 500 gigabytes, the next 10 terabytes, or your needs could go down. With cloud storage, you only pay for the space you use, so you can save money.
It’s vital for flexible and remote working
Let’s say you reject both the reasons we’ve looked at so far. Perhaps you’re convinced that your local storage setup is the pinnacle of security and affordability, and you won’t listen to any arguments to the contrary. Well, there’s one more massive reason why you need to take to the cloud: accessibility. You can make your local server accessible online, but that means your hardware needs to be running and active over the web on a 24/7 basis — which is expensive and wearing. Cloud storage uses worldwide CDNs like Cloudflare and backups to ensure that you can access your files anywhere at any time (no maintenance demands or risk of outages).
If your business relies on a substantial database and/or requires a lot of collaborative or remote working, it’s way past time to move your files to the cloud. It’s cheaper, more secure, and much more accessible… and with a good IT provider on your side, you can get everything done swiftly and easily.
