have you ever wondered if cloud storage and cloud backup are the same? In reality they are very different solutions for different business challenges.
What is cloud storage?
Cloud storage options such as Dropbox, Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive is a great way to easily share files. The main goal of cloud storage is to store files online to be accessible, and to work with, from any device anywhere. You can compare it with a cloud based USB flash drive.
However, there is no guarantee, no monitoring and reporting, no support and if a server goes down in one of their data centers, you may never see those files again. The majority of the services have a web interface for you to upload files. Therefore files can only be encrypted on the server side, making transportation less secure. They do not offer an automated process for uploading or syncing files between your computer and their service.
Cloud Storage is a great way to share documents. However, it isn’t the best place to back up your important business applications and documents.
What is cloud backup?
Cloud backup is a cloud-based application, which provides you with the ability to automatically backup your files, applications, virtual machines or servers and store them safely for disaster recovery purposes. Cloud Backup is an insurance for your data and business continuity.
Cloud backup is typically built around a local client application that runs on a basis of multiple times a day, with automatic schedule in the background.
The application collects, compresses, encrypts and transfers data to the service provider’s servers. To reduce the amount of bandwidth consumed and the time it takes to transfer files, the service provider provides incremental backups after the initial full backup.
The primary data resides in the original location where secondary stored data is safely stored to the cloud, to be used for data recovery. The cloud backup solution stores all data with a custom retention policy, so you can fix corrupted files by restoring earlier versions of a file.
Final Thoughts:
We hope now you have basic understanding of difference between cloud storage and cloud backup. In short main goal of cloud storage is to store files online to be accessible and to work with anywhere which can be compared with cloud based USB flash drive, whereas main goal of cloud backup is to backup files on your computer and store them safely for disaster recovery options.
Thank you for reading. For more details on our products and services, please feel free to visit us at intellope.com. You may find what you need to boot your business forward.
