Which Cloud Service is Best For Small Businesses?

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The cloud has become very popular, especially among small businesses. Why? Cloud services provide efficient, effective and easy means of storing data online. But which cloud service is best for small businesses?

As a start, discover some of the most important cloud features to learn how the cloud can work for you.

What is cloud storage?

Cloud storage is a computing model that lets you store data on a cloud provider’s host system. In this case, the provider mainly operates the cloud for data storage as a service.

The cloud also lets you get your data from anywhere with internet. Plus, it offers an on-demand business model, so costs are lower.

How does cloud storage work?

Cloud storage is set up as a pay-as-you-go model from a cloud vendor. This third party manages the data stored on their servers. Their other uses include providing security, durable data storage capacity and data accessibility.

The benefits of cloud storage

As you decide which cloud service is best for small businesses, consider the benefits of each. There are so many benefits that come with cloud storage in general. Here are a few:

Reduces cost of ownership: You don’t need to buy any hardware with the cloud. It also gives you the flexibility to add or remove storage capacity as needed.
Quick time to deploy: Your storage structure shouldn’t be an obstacle to deploying an application. With the ability to adjust storage and speeds at will, the cloud prevents storage space from stopping a project.
Better information management: The cloud gives you better end-to-end data lifecycle management. Centralizing storage lets you perform more complex data operations. As a result, you can gain more insight and actionable information.

Systems with redundant environments

Avoid systems where your site is hosted on one server. You don’t want to go offline just because something happens to that single part. Ultimately, you’ll lose business until the server is fixed. You don’t want to be in that bind.

Fortunately, cloud systems come with redundant hosting. This simply means that they have a backup site to take over a failed one quickly. So, no matter what happens, your customers will always have access to your solutions.

Systems with high availability

Without cloud hosting, your site’s uptime availability will depend on your physical server. The problem with this traditional hosting is that once it goes offline, your site goes down.

Luckily, cloud hosting services have high availability already built-in. This is because your site is spread out to use the resources of many servers. Hence, you simply switch to another server if something goes wrong with one.

Much faster performance and speed

Technology is moving at a quick pace. But the cloud is keeping up.

In response, cloud vendors now provide amazingly fast speeds. Small businesses should take advantage of this speed to provide customers with a better online experience. Plus, the cloud lets you do tasks that you may find difficult on your own. For instance, you can easily increase your data and storage capacity as needed.

The type of hardware a cloud vendor provides will determine the speed of your site. So, when you’re deciding which cloud service is best for small businesses, make sure they have premium server hardware before signing up.

Ease of use and accessibility

For the most part, cloud apps and services provide user-friendly interfaces. Most cloud hosts come with easy-to-use frontends that anyone with basic computer skills can understand.

Bonus points for drag and drop features with rich images that explain commands and navigation. Most importantly, since you can access cloud services over the internet, you can get your data from anywhere.

Security

The security of your data is important. This is more true with anything on the internet. The good news? Cloud systems invest in online security. They also hire skilled cybersecurity experts.

Cloud providers keep your data copied to different data centers too. So, there isn’t a single point of failure that can wipe out your data.

Highly cost-effective

Outsourcing cloud storage lets small businesses be more cost-efficient. First and foremost, it helps you reduce the cost you would have spent on internal resources. It also has a snowball effect on reducing other costs down the road. As a result, you save on office space and power consumption.