Data Backup Digest

Amazon S3 is an online backup service from retail giant Amazon. On top of being used as a consumer backup service, Amazon S3 is used by a lot of websites for file hosting. For example, Tumblr and Pinterest store their images on the Amazon S3 servers. Some cloud storage services also make use of Amazon S3, including Dropbox, Bitcasa and SyncBlaze.

According to Amazon, S3 is designed to provide a 99.99% durability and availability rate and aims to be scalable, highly available and with low latency. The reliability makes it great for cloud storage services that rely on their users being able to access their data at any time.

However, no service is entirely perfect. In the past the Amazon S3 infrastructure has suffered outages that have caused a vast amount of data to become inaccessible. Although the period of downtime is relatively slim, it could be a disaster for some users who needed their data at that exact moment.
And of course, although you wouldn’t expect unannounced it from a company as large as Amazon, the service could shut down at any moment.

As such, it’s probably best to diversify in your choice of cloud storage provider. Putting all your data with companies that solely use Amazon S3 means that if that goes down then you can’t access your data, no matter if it’s on Dropbox and Bitcasa.
This article will explore some cloud storage services that don’t use Amazon S3.

SkyDrive
This is the cloud storage offering from computing giant Microsoft and was launched back in 2007. It’s integrated with the Microsoft ecosystem, like the Windows 8 operating system and the Office 2013 product range. It’s also accessible through a web interface or various applications.

SkyDrive recently upped their free storage to 25GB and greater capacities can be purchased if you need more. Those who make heavy use of Microsoft products and require use of the cloud could find that SkyDrive is the perfect option.

Google Drive
As the name suggests, this is the cloud storage offering from search engine company Google. It’s relatively new compared to some competitors, having been launched in April 2012.

New, free users will receive 15GB of storage when signing up. Drive is tied in with applications such as Google Docs and Gmail. If you prefer the Google ecosystem then you could find that Drive is the better option, since it functions much like SkyDrive, offering desktop and handheld applications to make accessing your files from anywhere a breeze.

Box
Box is cloud provider that prides itself on offering strong security and providing to a vast number of businesses. They have packages for personal, business and enterprise IT use; free and paid, depending on how much storage you need and what feature set you require.

Box has blogged about how a lot of storage providers popped up around the time that Amazon S3 launched onto the market. A lot of inexperienced companies wanted you to put your data with them. Box says that they have years of experience and properly understand the nature of cloud storage.