Cloud storage is hot - again!

But what do people mean when they talk about cloud storage – and do they really know what it can do these days?

Not so long ago, once you got beyond Dropbox, for most professional users cloud storage meant online backup, and the biggest concern with that was getting your data back. That hasn’t gone away – some of the biggest cloud service providers make it effectively free to upload data but then charge you to get it back. So backing up your 5TB system is fine, but the cost of restoring it might sting a little…

Then there’s the ways that cloud storage can help with GDPR. Regulatory compliance means you need to do data governance and management properly, and that’s a lot easier if you have a single data store or central system of record. A consolidated backup and archive service is just that, and for some companies it’s easier to acquire and run in the cloud than on-prem.