Benefits of Cloud Storage For Your Business

Why adopt cloud storage for business? The Pros and Cons

If you are thinking of investing in the cloud for your business, specifically in the area of storage, you are not alone. Cloud storage has become so mainstream that an increasing number of businesses are adopting it to achieve operational efficiencies. As per the State of the Cloud Report, around 81% of all enterprises already have a multi-cloud strategy in place and due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, we will experience a further 47% growth in public cloud spend. Cloud storage enables businesses to respond quickly to changing technologies and fosters IT infrastructure innovation. As with any type of platform, an evaluation of the pros and cons must be considered to determine if this storage is the right fit for your company’s IT infrastructure. Thus, in this article, we present some of the key pros and cons of cloud storage to help you make the decision.

Cloud Storage – The Pros

According to Forrester, the public cloud market is expected to grow by $236 billion in 2020. It is because of the following pros.

• Accessibility: Through the internet, you can access files in the cloud from anywhere. This lets you work beyond geographic locations and time zones.
• Cost savings: Cloud storage costs are minimal for small and medium scale businesses, leading to lesser operational costs every year and more savings. This is because it doesn’t require internal power to save information remotely.
• Disaster recovery: Today’s businesses must have emergency backup plans, which is where cloud storage is essential as it creates a backup copy of important data at remote locations.
• Scalability: Pay only for the volume of storage you need. When reviewing your business growth, you can easily scale up your cloud storage as per your cloud-storage needs. This also applies in the same way if your business operations shrink.
• Speed: Tests have demonstrated that when you leverage the cloud with the right enterprise technologies, the speeds attained can compete with onsite scores. For instance, an enterprise can have numerous servers backing up the data simultaneously, which is much faster than simply backing up onto a disk.
• Storage immortality: The cloud allows you to evade the risk of buying hardware that is likely to be obsolete. Instead, you pay for the size and performance that your business needs, and your cloud operator can upgrade it to keep apace with the latest technology.

Cloud Storage – The Cons

• Privacy and security in the cloud: There are risks with valuable and critical data being kept remotely. Before using the cloud, you must know that you are sharing sensitive business information with the third-party cloud-service provider. This may potentially put your business at risk. Therefore, it is imperative to select a reliable service provider.
• Bandwidth limitations: Based on what service you select, there might be a bandwidth allowance. If the business exceeds the allowance, it could be costly. Some vendors offer unlimited bandwidth, a key factor to consider when selecting the right provider.
• Vulnerability to cyber attacks: Your business data saved in the cloud is susceptible to outside hack attacks. The internet is not fully secured, and for this reason, there is a possibility of sensitive data theft.

Final Thoughts

Despite concerns regarding the security of data, with the correct security measures, most businesses believe the benefits of cost savings, disaster recovery management, and secure accessibility outweigh the risks. Cloud storage for your business could enable the mitigation of severe risks to your organisation, and ensuring business continuity. Cloud storage is here to stay as a rising trend worth considering for boosting your business’s infrastructure and operational efficiency.