Bold & Balanced
Regardless of where you look these days, one thing has become abundantly clear: cloud-based storage solutions represent the future of enterprise-grade data centers. After all, why should a small business go through the hassle of setting up a small on-premises data center when they can easily store all the information, they’d ever need off-site in a data center hosted by a reputable company.
This argument sounds enticing, and indeed cloud-storage is on a rapid growth trajectory, with major consumer-grade cloud solutions like Google Drive and OneDrive increasing in popularity every day. Yet, the dawn of the cloud-based era is hiding an underlying secret that even industry-leaders are trying to push out of mind. Despite the convenience that cloud-based solutions provide, many are inherently dangerous and insecure in their current iterations – with everything from malicious security breaches to accidental cloud businesses around the world time and money.
So, if the cloud is not yet the impenetrable, end-all, be-all of data storage, does this mean that your firm should completely abandon it? Well… it depends. If your company works with highly-confidential customer data, such as is the case throughout the healthcare industry, then now might not be the right time for a cloud solution. However, most businesses can benefit from dual use of on-premises and cloud-based storage solutions to make their information more secure and foolproof than ever before.
The Argument for Traditional Storage: SSD | HDD | Tape
Many of us know of a saying that states, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” While it may seem silly to bring such a candid statement up in the serious context of data management, this old adage can provide some valuable insight into the world of on-premises storage. Cloud-based storage solutions may be skyrocketing, both concerning popularity and number of terabytes housed, but it is not always best to trust bleeding-edge technology with the critical information your business relies on the most.
Instead, why not leverage tried-and-true storage technologies like Flash/SSD, HDD, and Tape to store the information that is absolutely critical for your firm to protect in a local data center. These information technologies have a great track record, with modern an option that is both supremely affordable and less failure prone than ever before.
Utilizing these veteran solutions could allow for your business to create their own on-premises data a very reasonable price, ensuring both cost savings and the peace-of-mind that your data is secure on the local network. We understand that every data storage solution is failure prone. With such considerations in mind, augmenting an on-premises mini-data center for crucial information with a cloud-based storage package offers many businesses a happy medium between the adoption of cutting-edge information technology solutions and prudent risk management practices.
On-Premises Storage + Thoughtful Cloud Use = Today’s Best Option
Before we continue, let’s take a moment to clarify one point. While cloud storage certainly has it’s downfalls today, it can be blended into an environment as an exciting and innovative technology that has the potential to improve how small and medium-sized businesses go about data management.
With such thoughts in mind, pairing a small local data center as described above with the thoughtful adoption of cloud-based technologies has the potential to improve the resiliency of your company’s data storage practices. While an on-premises solution is the best option for confidential information that may require immediate access, it is important to realize that even the most popular storage solutions will fail every once in a while.
Offsite Backup | Data Resiliency
As such, creating a separate offsite backup of critical business information through utilization of an air gap technology product (Spectra Logic’s certified tape library) can allow for an added layer of protection if an unforeseen event such as an office fire, water damage, or massive systems failure compromises the local copy stored in an on-premises solution. Such practices are a good sight for the average business and help to ensure that cost savings and data resiliency are able to go hand-in-hand when implementing this unique data storage strategy.
Overall, it is encouraged that your company looks into the possibility of paring a local data center solution with the thoughtful implementation of cloud storage. While cloud storage is an exciting new trend, in many ways, it is still untested, and therefore should not be relied on as a primary means of storing business essential documents and information.
Executive Success | Channel Partner
Hyperlinks/References
Security breaches – https://blog.storagecraft.com/7-infamous-cloud-security-breaches/
Cloud misconfiguration – https://doublehorn.com/cloud-misconfiguration-cloud-security-risk/
Skyrocketing – https://www.cloudwards.net/10-reasons-why-online-storage-is-really-hot-right-now/
Modern HDDs – http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/how-tos/photo-software/eight-reasons-to-get-an-external-harddrive.html#b