Data Backup Digest

The ability to access your data in the cloud is something that an increasing number of businesses are being drawn to. The fact that you can get to the data wherever you are and at any time offers great benefits. The problem lies in selecting which cloud storage solution is right for your business. There are so many different offerings on the market that it is hard to know which company to go with. Is Google’s Drive the right choice for you? How about the extremely popular Dropbox? This article will highlight which cloud storage provider offers the best tools for your business.
The primary thing you need to consider when choosing a cloud storage solution is space. You are using the cloud to store your data and as such it makes sense to know how much data you have. However, there are some things to bear in mind here. Firstly, decide what files you are going to be storing in the cloud. If you want to upload everything, including program and system files, then you will need much more space than if you were just uploading personal documents. Also, it may sound obvious, but your data is going to grow. Choose a price plan that gives you the best bang for your buck; there’s no point paying for 100 GB if you are only using half of that space.
Dropbox starts their pricing at $795 a year for 1000 GB of storage, with each additional 200 GB costing $125. Google Drive charges $49.99 a month ($599.88 a year) for the same amount of space, but the storage space cannot be scaled as easily as Dropbox as the next tier is 2 TB at $99.99 a month. It is SugarSync who offers the best deal on cost, charging $550 a year (or $55 a month) for unlimited space. If you need to upload a lot of data then SugarSync offer a fantastic deal when compared to their competitors.
The great thing about cloud storage is that you can access your files on multiple devices wherever you are. As such, it may be important to access your files from your phone. If the business is large and employees own different types of devices, a cloud storage solution that supports the majority of these is going to come in very useful. All of the major providers, like Dropbox, Drive and SugarSync, provide applications for iOS and Android. However, only Dropbox and SugarSync support Blackberry, with the former also supporting Kindle Fire and the latter supporting Windows Mobile and Symbian.
The right cloud storage solution may just rely on the platform that makes up the business infrastructure. If, for example, Google Apps are widely used throughout then it may make sense to go with Drive. However, something like SugarSync is great because it integrates seamlessly with the operating system. All of your files are automatically synced no matter where they are stored on the system. This is different to something like Dropbox, where all files need to be moved to a specific folder.
All cloud storage providers offer a certain amount of storage space for free, so it is worthwhile trialling them all out for a period and seeing which one works best.