Cloud storage: what does it really mean for you?

Cloud storage has been around for a while now and it’s getting bigger all the time: it took six years for the Amazon S3 object storage service to grow to a trillion pieces of data. Last month, less than a year after reaching the one trillion milestone, they reached two trillion objects, and the trend is set to continue. In June 2012, Microsoft’s Windows Azure storage had already reached four trillion objects and they reported a fourfold increase in the number of objects being stored that year alone. If you add up the number of objects being stored by just Amazon and Microsoft, there are approximately 847 objects stored in the cloud for every person on the planet!

This is all very interesting, but what does this really mean for you? Business of all sizes are starting to realise the impact and benefits of cloud storage to their organisation. If you asked them, how many of your co-workers would admit to using services like Dropbox for storing and sharing confidential and sensitive company information? What’s more, how would your company deal with a data breach by an employee using a public cloud sync and share service? This is just one example of a reason to use an enterprise grade cloud storage service - there are many more including network connectivity. With your data stored in the cloud, the connectivity to that data becomes vital.

So maybe you’re considering using cloud storage for your business – what factors should you bear in mind when choosing a vendor? A very important factor to take into account when using a cloud storage service is the location of that stored data and the legal and regulatory requirements regarding its use. Today we have announced a new object-based Cloud Storage service powered by EMC Atmos, that offers the customers of our channel partners multiple locations to store their data. If your business has to take into account data sovereignty regulations in one country, you can now use our cloud storage service and rest assured that the data is in the country you have specified. Unlike other providers that only offer a generalised “European Zone” for cloud storage, we allow our customers to choose the location of their storage from one or more of France, Germany, Spain and the UK.

If this interests you and you want to talk to someone about our Colt Cloud Storage service, please contact us or our distribution partners, Arrow ECS or Avnet.

Alternatively, if you just want to find out more about our Colt Cloud Storage service, take a look here at our cloud storage page.