Cloud Storage Isn't Always the Right Answer
The cloud is vast. The cloud is revolutionary. And most importantly, the cloud is changing the way organizations are storing some of their most critical data. However, the advent of cloud storage and computing doesn’t mean that every single software company, whether it be a giant like IBM or a startup with fewer employees than computers, should sprout wings and move operations into the wispy data storehouse in the sky.
If you ask Evernote vice president of operations Alexei Rodriguez about the cloud, you’ll mostly hear positive remarks. The executive understands the technology’s undeniable benefits, but Evernote actually uses its own data center for storage because it would rather keep its users’ data under its control at all times.
The other major reason for its cloudless business model? It would be four times more expensive for the company to take its physical storehouses and IT workers out of the equation and move into the cloud.
Plenty of industry experts are quick to call for a fully-automated, staff-free solution to IT, and that might just be the right call for certain players in the game. Automation and the cloud are most often the best answer, but moving years and years of archived data from physical to virtual locations isn’t always ideal or even possible.
Emails and smaller documentation should be stored via cloud technology, but some agencies are composed of people working with 500MB files on a daily basis, files too large for most reasonably priced bandwidth options. These are better stored physically.
As this new technology currently stands, businesses of all sizes are going to run into situations when the cloud isn’t the best solution. Moving data online could lead to infrastructure benefits, better scalability, and a more agile strategy, but don’t expect huge financial savings in every case.
The cloud is here to stay. This isn’t some well-marketed fad that a quick gust of wind will blow away. However, it’s also not an end-all, be-all solution to data storage and computing, either. An individual company needs to weigh the benefits when considering a move to the cloud, understanding that sometimes, physical storage is the most logical answer.
