New Trends in Cloud Storage You’ll Want to Know About
Whether you’re storing family photos and videos or all your company’s digital forms and marketing assets, cloud storage has become a necessity.
Before we had the ability to store files in the cloud, they were typically stored on computer hard drives and on-premises servers. This made it difficult to share files with others either inside or outside your business or family.
Most people will remember the frustration of trying to send a large file by email before you could send a cloud storage link. If a file size is just a fraction over the allowable size of the mail server, it gets bounced back. Just trying to get an image proof of a brochure to someone for approval could be time-consuming and frustrating.
Then came cloud storage. Suddenly file size didn’t matter anymore. You could easily drag and drop files from your computer into the cloud environment and then send a link to share it with someone else. Companies could also ensure that everyone in the office was working off the same most recent version of a file.
That represented a major improvement when it came to file storage, file accessibility, and file sharing.
And cloud storage just keeps getting better and evolving along with technology. It pays to keep abreast of the new trends happening in the cloud storage sector since most people rely on it daily.
Between 2019 and 2027, the cloud storage market is expected to grow from $46.12 billion to $222.25 billion.
What’s coming that you’ll want to know about? Here’s a rundown of the latest advances coming to a cloud storage provider near you.
Automation to Help With Organization & More
It’s estimated that the average employee spends 30% of their time searching and gathering information. File storage, both local and cloud, can easily get disorganized. This is especially the case when you have multiple people sharing the same cloud storage system.
You can expect to see a helping hand from automation. Cloud providers are utilizing this along with AI to take on some of those manual administration tasks, such as account provisioning, ingesting (which is obtaining and importing data from other systems), folder organization, and more.
Ransomware Recovery & Protection
Ransomware has only been growing in cost and volume over the last few years, and no type of storage system is immune, this goes for cloud storage as well.
To help combat the dangers of ransomware and protect their own data as well as that of their customers, cloud storage providers have begun implementing ransomware protections.
These include things like additional security features that can prevent files from being automatically altered without approval. Ransomware recovery is also becoming a new feature, in which the storage system will keep an untouched copy of files in a separate system that could be restored in the case of a ransomware infection of a cloud storage environment.
More “Edge” Considerations in Cloud Storage
Most people don’t realize the geographical decisions that go into the placement of cloud servers for SaaS tools, cloud storage, and other services. The farther away the cloud server environment is from the people using those resources, the more expensive it can be to provide a fast and responsive connection.
This has led to the adoption of the concept of “Edge computing,” which is where providers attempt to offer cloud resources as close as possible to the people that will be using them.
What this will mean for you and/or your business is that you might be asked to choose a specific server location when signing up for services. You may also be provisioned a location closest to the address you enter when signing up, which makes that address important to the overall speed and reliability you experience in that system.
Legacy Providers of Hardware Getting Into Cloud Storage Services
Hardware providers that have been around forever, like Dell and Hewlett-Packard, may be known for their hardware and devices, but they are now looking to supplement their business with cloud offerings.
Some that may be worth looking into both now and in the future would be:
- Hewlett-Packard Enterprise’s Data Services Cloud Console
- Dell’s APEX Backup Services & Multi-Cloud Data Services
- NetApp and acquisition Spot.io
What these companies are doing is exploring how cloud storage can be tied to other services rather than be treated as a standalone environment. This opens opportunities for more automation of file storage and file ingestion activities as well as tying automated cloud storage to data backup systems to ensure cloud data is protected in the case of a data loss incident.
How is Your Cloud Environment Looking? Need Help?
How well your cloud environment and storage are configured impacts productivity and data security. Quantum PC Services can assist your Sturgeon Bay area business with a review of your cloud environment to identify areas needing optimization.
Contact us today to learn more! Call 920-256-1214 or reach us online.
