A Business Storage NAS can be your businesses’ personal, secure cloud
If you’re an entrepreneur or running a small business, keeping your data organized and available has never been easier — thanks to the burgeoning availability of Public Cloud services and easy NAS systems (Network Attached Storage).
It’s a golden age in mass data, and that’s a lucky thing. Data’s key to your business, and we don’t all have in-house IT teams to set things up for us, right?
These days we can DIY. But there are decisions to make. Public Cloud? Private Cloud? How much of each? What are they good for?
Public cloud services offer easy sign-up and access through web-based applications. They can give you a little or lots of storage for a monthly fee, and you only pay for what you use. And they’re easy to use. Seems like a pretty obvious way to go.
On the other hand, we have to consider the special strengths of a “private cloud,” with your own in-house NAS storage device (hosted on- or off-site). It’s faster, more secure, affordable, you can build on it as you grow (so you also pay just for what you need), and you can set it up easily, to fit your own business needs.
I’ve talked with a few of my fellow small-biz friends and here’s a few things we like about NAS:
Super fast access
It can be 15 times faster than public cloud when you’re accessing your data on the local network. Obviously: better productivity.
Secure
NAS units have government-grade, AES 256-bit encryption for security. Only you — the business user with the encryption key — can access your data.
Low cost
Public cloud services are enticing because you can sign up at low cost up front. But the one-time cost for a NAS device is actually cheaper long-term — it can save a business almost $5,000 over three years.
Grow it when you need
We all hope our business will grow. NAS’s swappable hard drives make it easy to boost your storage in the future to more than four times what’s available with a public cloud service.
Easy setup
Private NAS systems are plug-and-play and can be up and running in minutes. They’re built for data redundancy and tested for stability so you can set it up and let it run!
Conveniently located
When you keep your NAS system right in your own office, there’s no more worries about uptime issues you can get with public cloud services. Of course, you can securely access your private cloud from other locations too!
So decide for yourself. Some of my friends have used some of each, with Public Cloud as an extra measure of backup for some data. Others have put two NAS systems at different locations for extra protection.
How is your data set up for fast, easy, secure access?
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Who is John Paulsen? A former small-business leader myself, I feel your pain (and joy) and hope you’ll enjoy the blog. I launched and ran a well-regarded production company in San Francisco with a team of 9 brilliant, hard working people. I learned to manage a wide array of tasks a small business must handle — business strategy, facilities design, HR, payroll, taxes, marketing, all the way down to choosing telecom equipment and spec’ing a server system to help my team collaborate in real-time on dense media projects from multiple production rooms. I’ve partnered with and learned from dozens of small business owners.
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