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Cloud Storage

Best Cloud Storage Solutions

Cloud storage refers to your ability to access your corporate data from anywhere at any time and from any place in the world that has an internet connection. The data is hosted in the cloud, which is a network of remote servers located off-site from your office.

How does it work?

Companies will rent space on the cloud-provider’s data servers. These companies will pay the host cloud vendor for the ability to run their applications, perhaps host any services or backup data to the cloud. This storage can grow or shrink depending on the application requirements or season or period of the year where higher than normal demand will occur.

Is it safe?

It is the responsibility of the host provider to ensure all files remain secure and are not lost or destroyed. The best cloud storage providers will use multiple storage methods or locations to securely store back-ups of the data. Additionally, these providers will guarantee uptime availability to keep running at all times.

To secure the data from others, cloud storage systems will use authentication processes like usernames and passwords. Data encryption is used as well to protect data that has been stolen or intercepted. The only concern is rogue employees of the data solutions vendor that may have access to your data.

Popular cloud storage comparisons

Box vs G Suite Enterprise

Box vs Dropbox

Dropbox vs G Suite Enterprise

Benefits of using cloud storage for business

Data Accessibility: Access is granted to authorized users from multiple locations and devices. The ability to quickly and easily share files with other as needed is a major feature.

Scalability: Companies can quickly and easily scale cloud hardware or software (or storage requirements) any time without the additional costs incurred for hiring technical expertise to do so internally.

Disaster Recovery: If your company data is located at one physical location, it remains vulnerable to natural weather disasters, human influence and hardware failures. Cloud storage will use multiple locations, providing extreme redundancy.

Usage cost: Pay only for what is stored only. It is a sliding scale that moves as your data moves.

Cloud Storage Disadvantages

Security threats: While online storage will provide you with secure storage of your data, efficient data management and privacy protection against hacks, it is not completely impenetrable. Depending on your business governance and compliance requirements, locating data and entrusting it to a third-party may raise concerns about data privacy, confidentiality or even legal (or approved) geographical location of the data. Some of these issues can be mitigated by choosing to use a private (or hybrid) cloud solution. This is more expensive than the public cloud, but it will give your greater control of the data location and storage.

Data management is limited: When your company moves the data over to cloud storage using a public or hybrid solution, users will give up partial to full control of their data organization to and outside vendor. This is another area where a private cloud may be a better solution.

Vendor lock-in: It is one challenge when migrating data from on-premise to a cloud-based solution. It is another challenge to migrate from one cloud vendor to another. The longer you are contractually obligated to work with one cloud vendor provider, the greater the risk of vendor lock-in concerning contractual stipulations, vendor system incompatibilities or a lack of current cloud migration tools and services.

How is cloud storage managed?

Personal Storage allows a user to store data online securely and access it by using any number of devices connected to an internet enabled location.

Public Cloud Storage is used by a cloud storage vendor who manages large data from multiple users who are part of a ‘public cloud’. Each business will rent storage space and release any underlying responsibility for infrastructure to the vendor. While there exists many users and businesses sharing this public cloud, users cannot access another users’ (or company) data.

Private Cloud solutions are a storage service that is privately arranged by a single business for their own use. This storage solution offers a higher level of security than if the business used a public solution. Private storage solutions are less reliable though as they are largely designed for a smaller environment located onsite at the office or in combination as a hybrid solution.

Hybrid storage is the combination of both private and public storage. Some businesses who cannot afford the monthly cost for a full private solution will elect the hybrid solution.

How are files stored in the cloud?

There are three primary types of data storage:

File Storage: This is a hierarchical system that nests folders of data under directories and subdirectories. Inside of each folder resides ‘metadata’, which is great for data retrieval but only for smaller amounts of data. Large volume retrieval presents a challenge. While file storage is the most affordable types of storage, it doesn’t really scale up as easily as others.

Block storage: Data is organized in volumes of blocks. Each block represents files arranged in specific sizes (chunks) of data. Each of these blocks are then tagged with a unique identifier. While this method of storage makes for very fast retrieval of data, the fact that it is missing the metadata component of file storage means the information retrieved from search won't have the meta data with it to make reviewing it much more difficult.

Object storage refers to unique units called “objects.” Each of these objects contains unstructured data, metadata, and a unique ID. Objects are stored in flat address space (not a file directory) and they enable much more complex customization of metadata. It is extremely scalable and much more receptive to manual searches as the data that needs to be reviewed contains both file information and metadata.

Final thoughts

Companies who operate in the data storage space live and die by their reputations. They cannot afford breaches, so they do everything in their power to ensure your data information is kept under lock and key.

Top 8 Cloud Storage Tools

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAPG Suite EnterpriseNasuniDropboxBoxGoogle Cloud StorageAzure NetApp FilesGoogle Drive Enterprise

NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
8.8
Rating
11
Reviews
1,288
Words/Review
11,794
Views
6,154
Comparisons
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- NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP vs Azure NetApp Files
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In terms of administration, the portal which provides the dashboard view is an excellent tool for operations. It gives you volume divisions, usage rates, which division is using how much data, and more. The operations portal is fantastic for the support team.
G Suite Enterprise
8.2
Rating
37
Reviews
489
Words/Review
4,682
Views
4,038
Comparisons
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- G Suite Enterprise vs Box
- G Suite Enterprise vs Dropbox
If I'm addressing certain emails from banks — automatic emails, like OTP, etc. — I can create rules and forward that OTP to the specific email IDs. You can create rules and deliver mail to different groups using the forwarding feature. It's handy.

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Nasuni
8.9
Rating
16
Reviews
1,818
Words/Review
3,106
Views
2,200
Comparisons
Popular Comparisons
- Nasuni vs Box
- Nasuni vs Dropbox
We use Nasuni's continuous file versioning feature and it fully protects us. With the ability to version files and have continuous recovery, it helps in terms of resiliency. If we have an incident then we would be able to easily recover from it by using the technology.
Dropbox
8.1
Rating
31
Reviews
297
Words/Review
3,789
Views
3,277
Comparisons
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- Dropbox vs SmartVault
- Dropbox vs Box
We don't really use the collaboration features because we have only a small organization. Dropbox is valuable having the hard drive space available, and the access to be able to upload and access the content.
Box
8.4
Rating
7
Reviews
461
Words/Review
7,293
Views
5,914
Comparisons
Popular Comparisons
- Box vs Dropbox
- Box vs SmartVault
The collaboration of the solution is good.Box is very realistic when it comes to sharing capabilities.
Google Cloud Storage
8.9
Rating
22
Reviews
283
Words/Review
2,694
Views
2,348
Comparisons
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- Google Cloud Storage vs Huawei FusionStorage
- Google Cloud Storage vs Zoolz Intelligent Cloud
Access your files from anywhere, no installation necessaryThe most valuable feature of Google Cloud Storage is the filter option. You can search with some artificial intelligence kinds of features. For example, if I search for a beach, it'll show me all the beach-related pictures, which I took five or ten years before. So this is a cool feature that I've seen. They give as many features as they can to make it better, so I'm happy with this solution.

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Azure NetApp Files
9.0
Rating
2
Reviews
1,370
Words/Review
8,399
Views
6,233
Comparisons
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- Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
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Azure NetApp Files has been stable.Its security and ease of use are most valuable.
Google Drive Enterprise
8.5
Rating
15
Reviews
398
Words/Review
631
Views
344
Comparisons
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- Google Drive Enterprise vs Dropbox
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I'm satisfied with the basic function. it's convenient to share documents or download shared documents you need. Record your meeting and simply share with anyone without thinking where to store the file.

See all 25 solutions in Cloud Storage

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud
9.3
Rating
3
Reviews
1,507
Words/Review
936
Views
245
Comparisons
Huawei FusionStorage
8.0
Rating
1
Reviews
552
Words/Review
1,166
Views
852
Comparisons
HPE Cloud Object Storage
9.0
Rating
1
Reviews
475
Words/Review
162
Views
67
Comparisons
Kiteworks
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
1,099
Views
936
Comparisons
Tresorit
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
964
Views
896
Comparisons
SmartVault
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
839
Views
709
Comparisons
SpiderOak
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
755
Views
721
Comparisons
Zoolz Intelligent Cloud
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
266
Views
233
Comparisons
Onehub
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
189
Views
164
Comparisons
Datomia
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
118
Views
69
Comparisons
NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for AWS
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
73
Views
46
Comparisons
Keepit
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
54
Views
33
Comparisons
Covata Platform
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
42
Views
29
Comparisons
AeroFS
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
51
Views
23
Comparisons
KeyCloud Storage as a Service
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
29
Views
11
Comparisons
Oracle Storage Cloud Service
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
25
Views
10
Comparisons
EXAScaler
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
26
Views
8
Comparisons
Ivanti File Director
N/A
Rating
0
Reviews
0
Words/Review
15
Views
3
Comparisons

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Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, Google, Nasuni and others in Cloud Storage. Updated: January 2022.

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566,121 professionals have used our research since 2012.