Cloud storage has been a huge revolution in how businesses store their data, but as it’s relatively new, there’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding it.
Understanding cloud storage is essential to ensure that your business is able to maximize the cloud’s benefits, but, more often than not, businesses are making the same old mistakes and missing out on value and performance.
Seeing as value and performance are critical for any successful business, it’s essential that you don’t make these 5 cloud storage mistakes.
- Not Selecting the Right Storage Option
Every day there seems to be more and more service providers offering cloud storage options, so all this choice is surely a good thing, right? Well, yes, but all their claims of “the best package” can make it difficult for businesses to select a storage option which is right for their needs. And this can lead to businesses overpaying for cloud storage options which aren’t necessary.
The key to avoiding this – and securing the system which suits your business – is to work with reputable cloud brokers who can conduct surveys on your storage needs. With this data in hand, they’ll be able to search out the best cloud storage to suit your budget and infrastructure.
- Not Planning For Disasters
Whilst your data in the cloud is regularly backed up, the fact remains that this storage remains prone to failure. And this means that there’s the potential for you to be facing some significant downtime for your business.
Therefore, you need to ask yourself some serious questions about contingency plans for such scenarios. Perhaps a certain amount of data should also be stored on site to ensure that business critical operations can continue or, maybe, go through disaster recovery exercises to explore all your options.
- Not Maximizing Connectivity
You’re potentially going to be accessing large amounts of data from the cloud, so you need to ensure that your internet connection can cope with all the accompanying bandwidth demands. Obviously, networks run much faster and are more stable than broadband, so the enhanced costs shouldn’t be a deciding factor. After all, having maximized access to your data at all times is a luxury you can’t afford to dismiss.
- Not Using the Cloud’s Full Potential
Many businesses view their cloud storage as just that, storage. No more, no less. And whilst, yes, it’s an amazing resource for storage, there’s the potential for so much more, but not enough businesses take advantage of this and, effectively, lose value from their cloud system. One of the main benefits of the cloud is that it allows collaboration between remote users and dispenses with the need for sending huge files over email or having to wait to download them.
- Not Realizing Any Maintenance is Required
With the cloud out of sight, it may almost feel, at times, that it’s also out of mind. However, maintenance is still an essential part of working with cloud storage. Your IT providers will still need to work closely with the providers to ensure connections are maintained and be ready to run diagnostic tests. And this is why it’s essential that your IT providers are involved with the implementation of the system from the very moment you start shopping around.
For more ways to secure and optimize your business technology, contact your local IT professionals.
