The storage of data on remote servers that are accessed over the internet is known as

Cloud storage is defined as a data deposit model in which digital information such as documents, photos, videos and other forms of media are stored on virtual or cloud servers hosted by third parties. It allows you to transfer data on an offsite storage system and access them whenever needed. This article delves into the basics of cloud storage.

Table of Contents

• • What Is Cloud Storage?
  • Types of Cloud Storage
  • Benefits and Challenges of Cloud Storage Adoption
  • Top 8 Best Practices to Implement Cloud Storage for Companies in 2021

What Is Cloud Storage?

Cloud storage is a data deposit model in which digital information such as documents, photos, videos and other forms of media are stored on virtual or cloud servers hosted by third parties. It allows you to transfer data on an offsite storage system and access them whenever needed. 

Cloud storage is a cloud computing model that allows users to save important data or media files on remote, third-party servers. Users can access these servers at any time over the internet. Also known as utility storage, cloud storage is maintained and operated by a cloud-based service provider.

From greater accessibility to data backup, cloud storage offers a host of benefits. The most notable being large storage capacity and minimal costs. Cloud storage delivers on-demand and eliminates the need to purchase and manage your own data storage infrastructure. With “anytime, anywhere” data access, this gives you agility, global scale and durability.

How Cloud Storage Works

Cloud storage works as a virtual data center. It offers end users and applications virtual storage infrastructure that can be scaled to the application’s requirements. It generally operates via a web-based API implemented remotely through its interaction with in-house cloud storage infrastructure.

Cloud storage includes at least one data server to which a user can connect via the internet. The user sends files to the data server, which forwards the message to multiple servers, manually or in an automated manner, over the internet. The stored data can then be accessed via a web-based interface.

To ensure the constant availability of data, cloud storage systems involve large numbers of data servers. Therefore, if a server requires maintenance or fails, the user can be assured that the data has been moved elsewhere to ensure availability. 

Also Read: What Is Software as a Service (SaaS)? Definition, Examples, Types, and Trends

Types of Cloud Storage

Types of Cloud Storage

Cloud services have made it possible for anyone to store digital data and access it from anywhere. This means that cloud storage is essentially a virtual hard drive. From saving important data such as word documents, and video files, to accessing the cloud to process complex data and run applications – cloud storage is a versatile system. To decide which is the best cloud storage, the user needs to determine their use case/s first. Let’s look at the different types of cloud storage solutions:

1. Private cloud storage

Private cloud storage is also known as enterprise or internal cloud storage. Data is stored on the company or organization’s intranet in this case. This data is protected by the company’s own firewall. Private cloud storage is a great option for companies with expensive data centers and can manage data privacy in-house. A major advantage of saving data on a private cloud is that it offers complete control to the user. On the other hand, one of the major drawbacks of private cloud storage is the cost and effort of maintenance and updates. The responsibility of managing private cloud storage lies with the host company.

2. Public cloud storage

Public cloud storage requires few administrative controls and can be accessed online by the user and anyone else who the user authorizes. With public cloud storage, the user/company doesn’t need to maintain the system. Public cloud storage is hosted by different solution providers, so there’s very little opportunity for customizing the security fields, as they are common for all users. Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Cloud, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure are a few popular public cloud storage solution providers. Public cloud storage is easily scalable, affordable, reliable and offers seamless monitoring and zero maintenance.

Also Read: What Is Cloud Computing? Definition, Benefits, Types and Trends 

3. Hybrid cloud storage

Hybrid cloud storage is a combination of private and public cloud storage. As the name suggests, hybrid cloud storage offers the best of both worlds to the user – the security of a private cloud and the personalization of a public cloud. In a hybrid cloud, data can be stored on the private cloud, and information processing tasks can be assigned to the public cloud as well, with the help of cloud computing services. Hybrid cloud storage is affordable and offers easy customization and greater user control.

4. Community cloud storage

Community cloud storage is a variation of the private cloud storage model, which offers cloud solutions for specific businesses or communities. In this model, cloud storage providers offer their cloud architecture, software and other development tools to meet the community’s requirements. Any data is stored on the community-owned private cloud storage to manage the community’s security and compliance needs. Community cloud storage is a great option for health, financial or legal companies with strict compliance policies.

Also Read: What Is Cloud Encryption? Definition, Importance, Methods and Best Practices

Benefits and Challenges of Cloud Storage Adoption

The cloud is rapidly becoming the storage environment of choice for enterprises. 30% of all corporate data was stored on the cloud in 2015, which increased to 50% in 2020. The cloud storage market has also grown in tandem and is expected to be worth $137.3 billion by 2025, as per MarketsandMarkets. This is because the cloud offers several benefits over traditional on-premise storage systems. 

Benefits of cloud storage

• • Flexibility and ease of access: Cloud storage means that your data is not tied down to any one location. Various stakeholders can access assets stored on the cloud from a location and device of their choice without any download or installation hassles. 
  • Remote management support: Cloud storage also paves the way for remote management either by internal IT teams or by managed service providers (MSPs). They can troubleshoot without being present on-site, speeding up issue resolution. 
  • Fast scalability: A major benefit of cloud storage is that you can provision new resources with only a few clicks without the need for any additional infrastructure. When faced with an unprecedented increase in data volumes, this feature aids business continuity. 
  • Redundancy for backup: Data redundancy (i.e., replicating the same data in multiple locations) is essential for an effective backup mechanism. The cloud ensures your data is kept secure in a remote location in case of a natural disaster, accident, or cyberattack. 
  • Long-term cost savings: In the long-term, cloud storage can save you significantly in the costs of hardware equipment, storage facilities, power supply, and personnel, which are sure to multiply as your organization grows. 

Also Read: Top 10 Cloud Data Protection Companies in 2021

Challenges of cloud storage

While there are undeniable advantages of adopting cloud storage, there are a few cons to remember as well. By navigating these cons or challenges, you can arrive at a pragmatic cloud storage strategy that maximizes its benefits. 

• • Risk of vendor lock-in: If all your data is stored in a single public cloud platform, there’s a risk of vendor lock-in and potential inflexibilities. Address this with a hybrid or multi-cloud blueprint where there is sufficient interoperability between environments. 
  • Security issues around multi-tenancy: Public cloud environments are shared by multiple tenants, which can multiply your security vulnerabilities. You can prevent this through cloud data protection and by leveraging the private cloud for sensitive data. 
  • Fragmentation of IT landscape: Unplanned cloud storage adoption can cause your IT landscape to become fragmented over time. That’s why you need a detailed strategic blueprint outlining your short, mid, and long-term cloud roadmap. 
  • Outage and downtime risk: Cloud platforms managed by external providers could suffer from an outage, rendering the data and applications stored in these environments inaccessible. Service level agreements should specify downtime metrics, and you need additional redundancy for your most critical data. 
  • Short-term budget overruns: Cloud cost worries are extremely common, where data storage and storage processes occupy more space than estimated. A cloud resource management tool can help address this, giving you visibility and control. 

Also Read: Top 10 Hybrid Cloud Solution Companies in 2021

Selecting the right cloud storage provider

Let’s look at the most critical aspects businesses need to consider when selecting a cloud storage provider.

• • Storage space: The amount of data a business processes determines the requirement for storage space. A small organization (around 250 employees) could opt for public cloud storage services, which offer employees storage space of over 15 GB each. It is recommended to compare various public cloud storage pricing plans before signing the deal.
  • Maintenance & uptime: Cloud servers need to be maintained to make sure the data stored is secure. However, downtimes and network failures can occur anytime. Therefore, understanding the maintenance and uptime needed by cloud service providers is essential. Organizations should ask their chosen cloud service providers to demonstrate their downtime plans and run checks before buying any cloud solution.
  • Security: If data is compromised, then cloud storage comes in handy as a useful backup. There is no guarantee, however, that cloud storage providers are safe from security threats. Understanding the security measures in place at the cloud storage provider is important. Two main factors need to be considered for security: the physical security of the cloud solution provider’s servers and the level of encryption applied to the data stored.
  • Speed: The speed of downloads from the cloud has a major impact on businesses and their ability to process critical data. If cloud storage providers place a cap on the download speed, retrieving data and running applications will take longer. Therefore, organizations need to gauge the cloud storage download speeds of a provider before buying any storage space.

Also Read: Cloud Vs On-premise Comparison: Key Differences and Similarities

Top 8 Best Practices to Implement Cloud Storage for Companies in 2021

Even if it involves a few challenges, cloud storage implementation is now a top priority for companies. It enables easy access to information for large, distributed teams operating in a WFH environment. It can help you gain from sophisticated data analytics without investing in on-premise storage for large volumes of data. Most importantly, it enables interconnectivity between different applications and data sources, generating efficiencies and business value. 

In the last year, cloud storage adoption has accelerated at a dramatic pace, and the momentum will continue for the foreseeable future. Here are 8 best practices that can help make the most of this opportunity.

1. Pilot cloud storage using non-business-critical data 

The implementation of cloud storage marks a significant change in your IT operational approach, transforming how other related processes are carried out. 

It will influence data-driven applications, business analytics, integrations, and other components of the IT landscape. Therefore, it is important to first trial cloud storage at a limited scale before implementing it across the organization. This will allow you to observe its impact on related IT processes, tweaking the implementation SLAs and configurations accordingly. Conduct the initial pilot using non-business-critical data to avoid interrupting live processes and keep any adverse impacts restricted to a sandboxed environment. 

Also Read: Top 10 Cloud Security Challenges 2021 Needs to Address

2. Leverage multi-cloud to avoid vendor lock-in 

As the cloud storage market matures, providers are eager to deliver a wide variety of services and capabilities under one offering. However, this could lead to vendor lock-in. If you rely on a single cloud environment for all your storage requirements, any downtime or outage experienced by that environment could cripple your entire storage landscape. 

And, as your storage volumes increase with time, you will find it increasingly harder to shift out if necessary. To prevent such a situation, it is advisable to leverage a multi-cloud landscape where different data and application buckets are stored in a different cloud environment, and there is interoperability among platforms. 

Also Read: What Is Cloud Data Protection? Definition, Importance and Best Practices

3. Specify your data retention policies before migrating 

Data retention refers to the practice of holding on to a data asset for a limited period, as per the wishes of the data owner, business relevance, or industry rules. Retention policies not only mention how long to store data but also the timeline and methodology for retiring it. Data retention policies will determine how much cloud storage you occupy, the frequency of backup and transfer processes, and cloud storage costs. 

Without a detailed retention policy document in place, enterprises are likely to exceed their projected storage volumes well ahead of time, leading to budget overruns. That’s why you need to specify your data retention policies before migrating to the cloud, incorporating these into service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure predictability and compliance later on. 

4. Bring cloud storage under the ambit of IT compliance and audits 

IT compliance and audits tend to focus on on-premise environments and first-party managed storage, overlooking data housed in a remote location or by an external cloud vendor. This could cause non-compliance risks later on. Even if the data is stored by a public cloud vendor or a third-party MSP, enterprises must still take complete ownership of regulatory compliance around data privacy, compliance, and security. Cloud storage must be regularly audited with a detailed inventory of your assets, their utilization, and retention plans. 

5. Invest in the private cloud if you operate in a regulated industry 

Regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services, governments, and educational institutions typically generate and store large volumes of sensitive information. This could range from the medical histories of patients to the names and address information of school students or payment card details. It can be helpful to leverage private cloud storage for information such as these, protecting the data from the risks of a multi-tenant cloud architecture. 

Private cloud storage also means that you are immune to vendor-related outages and downtimes, which would render these vital data assets inaccessible. In fact, the private cloud is mission-critical for companies in regulated industries, where sensitive data is essential for day-to-day business processes and not just compliance-related archives. 

Also Read: What Is Container Security? Definition, Components, Best Practices, and Software

6. Make remote work a focus area when planning for cloud storage 

Remote work is now a major use case for cloud storage implementation and is poised to be the new normal for the foreseeable future. Therefore, your cloud storage strategy must take the needs of a remote worker into account, from connecting with the right productivity tools to enforcing security policies that restrict remote access in certain scenarios. Outline measures to prevent employees from accessing cloud storage from unfamiliar and unauthorized devices. Specify clear policies to regulate which data can be stored on the cloud and which information needs to be kept on-premise. 

7. Optimize data transfer to avoid egress fees 

Most public cloud platforms charge you for data retrieval (also known as egress fees) to move data out of their cloud platform. This tactic encourages more dependency and possibly vendor lock-in, as you keep data immobile on the cloud for longer periods. Your data transfer frequency is directly linked to your cloud costs, and frequent retrieval (for example, to run on-premise analytics) will add to your resource consumption in the form of egress fees. 

There are two ways to address this. First, you can host analytics applications within the same public cloud so that data doesn’t need to be moved out for processing. Second, you can optimize each transfer by compressing data volumes to reduce the retrieval fees. 

8. Adopt a cloud-first cybersecurity solution 

Finally, ensure that your cybersecurity solution takes your cloud storage investments into account. For example, Trend Micro offers a cloud-first solution called Cloud One – Conformity, and there are several cloud access security broker (CASB) tools available. Even if only a portion of your total data assets is stored in the cloud, it has to be covered by a cybersecurity solution to close any vulnerabilities and demonstrate compliance with data protection laws. 

Also Read: What Is Cloud Computing Security? Definition, Risks, and Security Best Practices

Wrapping up

Even if the cloud plays a central role in data processing and storage, the future of cloud and data storage is changing rapidly. Data security is one of the major concerns in cloud storage, and in the future, mass data breaches will be a strong point of concern for businesses that opt for cloud storage. 

In such a scenario, will the cloud become obsolete? What are the possible alternatives to store complex data in the future? There are many options on the table, including serverless computing. Our two essential tips for techies looking at optimizing cloud services are conducting regular reviews and identifying redundant tasks on cloud services. The idea is to enjoy the freedom that the cloud offers without overspending.

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