Questions to Ask About Online Data Backup Service Providers

cloud computingIn today’s business, having unlimited — or nearly unlimited — space for data storage and backup is essential to not only maintaining business, but to allow it to expand. For businesses thinking of transitioning its data backup to the cloud, there are several factors to consider:

Why Use Cloud Backup?

This is the most obvious question a business should ask when looking into a cloud backup service. The answer is two-prong: backup files should be stored off site to keep data safe from theft, natural disasters, or being misplaced or corrupted, and the other reason is that backup storage and syncing happens in real time.

With backup on cloud storage, you can control how much is stored, when it’s stored and get to it with ease. It makes maintaining your data backup much more efficient than the traditional ways.

Does It Get Good Reviews?

To choose a good, reliable online data storage and backup service, compare features from various storage companies, read reviews, check storage capacities and read ratings.

How Can It Reduce Business Expenses?

One radical idea trending in today’s small businesses is using cloud data backup service to reduce on-site technology hardware costs. Equipment like desktops, servers, printers and network switches, for example, have an age limit and upgrades are expensive. So why not transfer some of that IT infrastructure to the cloud? By removing as much on-site technology hardware as possible, your business can see both a reduction in maintenance expenses and complexity in IT management.

Making sensible decisions in your data archiving can also free up more space in your cloud backup storage to help you keep a clean house. You can keep your cloud storage costs to a minimum by retaining only vital business data, such as financial records and customer information, and discarding anything that is of no value to your company.

What’s Trending for 2015?

The need for SaaS (Software as a Service) backup is increasing, as is the expectation of high performance data recovery for both local and remote sites. SaaS applications like Google Apps and Office 365 are becoming a hot commodity in 2015 as businesses look to lower costs of ownership and capital expenses. The hitch with these apps is if a business cancels its subscription, its data may be deleted after 90 days. For this reason, the need for cloud-based repositories will likely spike.

Creating a DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) plan is another trend for 2015. In the event of lost data, it is important to retrieve it quickly. This type of recovery plan is expected to be a “must-have” for businesses to ensure continuity, workflow and resilience against natural or man-made disasters.

How Reliable Is the Storage?

Securing storage for several years from now is vital. Hard drives typically only last between two and eight years, depending on how well they are kept. Writable discs are readily available, but they offer limited storage space. Flash drives can be reliable only if they’re used every so often. Left idle for long enough, they can lose their charge. Thus, cloud storage is becoming an increasingly attractive option for businesses.

In fact, the more futuristic storage function may be what is described as data lakes. These databases could cut down on costs of collecting, cleaning and aggregating data, allowing businesses to use large volumes of data for analytics or simply to store it for future use. It is emerging as a powerful approach to solving data integration issues and accessibility, as the upswing of mobile and cloud-based applications continues. Businesses seeking online data storage won’t be pigeon-holed into a predetermined data model, as data lakes relax standardization.

1 thought on “Questions to Ask About Online Data Backup Service Providers”

  1. Insightful read! I really do think that data backup service is important for SaaS users as data backup is not always covered by your SaaS provider. This feature would come in handy if your SaaS provider deletes some of your data from time to time to preserve disk storage or space for better performance. You would never know when you might need data or files that have been deleted so a backup is a must. — http://lirik.io/

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