Cloud storage, as the name suggests, is a remote service provided by a cloud service provider for storage of valuable company data on off-site locations that one can access through a public or private network. Earlier companies stored on on-site servers which required them to maintain the data and the servers and infrastructure required to host these massive servers. With the recent explosion of user data, off-site cloud storage solutions have become the go-to for big tech and small startups alike. This makes hosting, securing, managing, and maintaining the servers the providers’ responsibility.

Cloud-based storage services are known for their scalability which allows companies to scale up or scale down the amount of space they use every month as per their requirements. In doing so, the companies pay for the storage as a service rather than making huge investments in building and maintaining in-house storage solutions. While your long term costs might accumulate as your data grows, you won’t have to go overboard in trying to anticipate future growth.

Like on-site storage solutions, cloud storage solutions use servers to save data. Most of these servers are virtual machines that you can connect to using the internet, or a dedicated private connection, or a website, or a mobile app. As a part of their service package , the cloud service providers store data of multiple servers for redundancy. This enables them to let the companies access their data in case one or more servers are taken offline for maintenance.

Cloud storage is available in three forms; public, private, and hybrid.

• Public storage solutions - This form of storage allows you to store your data in remote servers that you connect to over the internet. These servers are also used by other companies and can be accessed by just about any device.
• Private storage solutions - These are similar to public storage solutions in the way they function but the servers reside within your network. This requires the cloud service providers to allocate a dedicated private cloud for the companies that is accessible through a private connection. Companies that might require such networks are usually banks and other retail corporations that deal in transactional data.
• Hybrid storage solutions - This form of storage is the combination of both the former services. Companies can choose to store sensitive data in the private cloud and non-sensitive data like emails in the public cloud.

Just like any other cloud-based service, cloud storage offers a ton of advantages with some obvious concerns pertaining to privacy, security and administration.

So what are these pros?

• Cloud-based storage enables companies to quickly set up their off-site “data-dumps”.
• Off-site management shifts the responsibility of maintaining the servers to the cloud service providers.
• It makes the storage more affordable and accessible to a lot of companies that are just starting out.
• Easy scalability makes it effortless to increase the storage.
• Your data is always secure, no matter what happens.

Now let’s take a look at the cons.

• Cloud-based storage enables companies to quickly set up their off-site “data-dumps”.
• Off-site management shifts the responsibility of maintaining the servers to the cloud service providers.