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If recent times have shown us anything, it’s that cloud services are here to stay and grow for the foreseeable future. As more and more people and businesses rely on networks to get their work done from physically distant/remote locations, the storage burden increases exponentially. The expansion of global cloud telephony and 5G service coverage are also accelerating the need for reliable, accessible and cheap cloud storage solutions.
While you might be only too happy to use up the free GBs offered by public cloud service providers to upload the entirety of your vacation photos from Instagram to save them forever, going the same route with your business data may not be the best move. In this post, we will explore the factors why you should consider opting for a private cloud service for your business data.
Cloud computing – All the good stuff comes in invisible packages
First off, the good stuff.
Unless you have been living and thriving under a rock, chances are that you have already come across the buttery smooth deliciousness of being able to create tons and tons of data (hey, what’s a day worth without a few hundred shots/ videos for your social channels?) and simply not having to worry about storage on portable devices only slightly bigger than your breakfast wafer.
Leaving personal data aside, public cloud services can be handy for anyone from someone just setting out to build their first web store to running the entire gamut of a hefty mid-sized business. Cloud services offer scalability, the ability to pause and resume storage services as and when required, gets rid of cumbersome IT hardware and maintenance requirements and ensures fairly good reliability with always-on access and data recovery with its decentralized architecture.
If public cloud is so good, why bother with private?
The answer is simple.
Security, the ability to do what you like exactly the way you like it and peace of mind.
In the age of social channels broadcasting our lives 24*7, we aren’t particularly bothered by large tech companies handling our private information. But when it comes to the security of your business data, you need to make certain that you are making an informed choice that won’t harm your long-term prospects and business sustainability.
Here are a few factors you should keep in mind when choosing between a public and private cloud service provider:
No one plays ‘I Spy’ with your business data
Public cloud is great and cheap. But your data is only as secure as the ethics of the technology conglomerates providing the service. Now I don’t know about you, but in a post-Cambridge Analytica world, I only trust what I can verify. While public cloud services are secure and generally reliable, as the end-user, we have no means of knowing where our data is physically located, who has access to the data or, how the data is being used.
Apart from intentional breach of trust, your public cloud service provider may simply hail from a distant geographical location/ country with its own rules for managing the security and integrity of your data that may not match with your expectations.
Reduced flexibility and customization options
If your firm has a complex network/ application structure, it might limit your chances of being able to use public clouds freely. The structure of public clouds is simply not very conducive to alteration or adaptability.
You can safely forget about customization of resources or service(s) should your business require it. The same applies for security and configurations. Some public services even prevent you from installing requisite operating systems. If you already have a compliance regulation architecture in place that you want to stick with, you should consider giving public clouds a wide berth.
Your data becomes dependent on the reliance and availability of third parties
This is true for public and private storage services alike. While cloud services offer you the supreme freedom of being able to wash your hands off entirely from management and maintenance of storage solutions, it also takes away your control over the same. With a local cloud service provider, however, you stand a chance of being able to reach out to the people providing the service should there be an unforeseen downtime/ disruption of service caused by maintenance issues. In the case of public cloud, these people become faceless and you need to rely on the company to provide efficiently managed services.
Apart from maintenance hiccups, regular data transmission in public clouds can also be affected by latency issues or, usage spikes in the internet. If application performance is of primary importance to your business, you may be better off with a private cloud solution.
Pay for customer support or forget about it
Public clouds are notorious for their lack of customer support. If you have accessed public cloud storage for business before, you will know that you often need to sign up for a whole different contract should you require customer support. If your public cloud provider fails to deliver efficient services, you can get stuck for the period of your agreement with no recourse.
In-depth monitoring of stored data
This is another area where public services lag behind private cloud service providers.
Quite apart from ensuring reliable monitoring of infrastructure equipment and connections at every point (including actual visual inspections), cloud services must be able to maintain thorough quality control for software updates and make sure backups are verified on a regular (hopefully, daily) basis.
While private clouds have historically been somewhat more vulnerable to single point of failures, they also provide more thorough and in-depth monitoring of data that is relatively more reliable than public clouds.
If you are considering opting for a local cloud storage solution, IT support Houston may be able to provide you with the right guidance.
Cloud computing Houston company offers a large variety of high-end, completely customizable, private cloud storage solutions that suit a large variety of business needs. These include in-built disaster recovery and data-loss prevention solutions and rapid provisioning of new servers should the need arise. The virtual and physical servers are hosted with VMWare and it also offers private email hosting through Microsoft Exchange with Barracuda spam filtering. Offsite backups and shared files can be stored through virtual storage.
Scott Young, is the president of PennComp LLC, an IT Outsourcing Houston company. Being a CPA, Six Sigma Master Blackbelt, Change Management Certified and Myers Briggs Qualified, Scott’s expertise is reflected in PennComp as a leading IT company for computer services and network integration. PennComp utilizes Six Sigma methodologies and practices in their service delivery and offers state-of-the-art monitoring and management tools to their clients.
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