What Is Cloud Backup Storage? Benefits and Why Your Business Needs It

Today's companies have technical advantages that weren't easily available 20 or even 10 years ago, and it’s all because of the power of the cloud.

Easily storing data remotely allows employees to access information from anywhere, which can be useful for companies with multiple locations or staff working remotely. It also allows you to forgo investing in actual hardware, since there are no limits to the amount of information you can store in a cloud. You can free up building space for other needs and reduce costs for maintenance and security.

Clouds can provide added security, too. If you lose data in one location because of a disaster, cloud backups can help you recover faster than you could if you had to repair or replace your hardware.

Cloud technology is a smart solution for businesses that are serious about efficiency and growth.

What Is Cloud Backup?

Cloud backup is when a company’s applications and data are copied to and stored on a backup server. This allows businesses to prepare for any sorts of unknown, unplanned factors that could corrupt or erase your data, including:

• Natural disasters like floods, fires, or tornadoes
• Intentional loss of data, such as hacking or sabotage
• Ransomware attacks
• Accidental loss of data, such as an employee deleting a critical folder

Cloud backups provide needed redundancy and are a more efficient archiving system than traditional external backups that can be lost or easily damaged and that are tied to one physical location.

Opt for a cloud backup solution that has intelligent pricing that adjusts to the perfect amount of storage services for your company and its needs. Employ the help of a cloud storage platform that can partner with additional disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) companies to heighten your data protection.

Seagate provides a variety of cloud backup solutions for any size of business and partners with backup software vendors such as Veeam to support your the development of your backup and recovery plan.

What Are the Benefits of Cloud Backup?

Aside from peace of mind, having reliable backups can minimize any downtime and financial losses while offline. Coming back online quickly means fewer unsatisfied or lost customers. Being able to quickly retrieve data from cloud backups means strengthened business continuity and less time rebuilding and rebooting hardware (or looking for traditional backup methods like disks, reinstalling everything from scratch, and then testing).

Usability

Employees can be trained in how to retrieve any lost items from cloud servers. Seagate makes this process especially user friendly and seamless.

Security

Data stored remotely on a cloud-based system at a secure facility includes several secure layers of encryption to ensure only authorized people can access it. This also decreases the risk of someone accessing your location to physically steal data.

Scalability

The amount of cloud storage you need can easily grow or be reduced as your company or a particular project evolves. This is a smarter solution than investing in hardware and either having too much storage or not enough.

Cost Effective

Cloud backups offer different prices depending on need. It's not hard to purchase additional storage for certain enterprise-level requirements. There's a simple pricing formula for different capacities. If you partner your cloud storage with an additional service, such as Amazon S3, this can provide additional cost savings due to the S3 intelligent tier pricing model.

Disaster Recovery

Storage backups should be part of every company's disaster recovery plan. This document is a guide to what happens when a disaster occurs, including who is responsible for what tasks in an effort to get stored data to come back online quickly and completely. Working within the cloud allows everyone to access critical information and provide services after a disaster—even if the physical location is unavailable. Clouds should always be accessible so you can begin repairs and restoration immediately rather than waiting for standard business hours.

Public Cloud Backup vs. Private Cloud Backup: Which One Is the Best Fit for You?

If you're new to cloud storage, you may hear the terms private cloud and public cloud.

Essentially, a private cloud has been reserved for a particular company, while a public cloud is an accessible IT service offered by one provider to other companies. Amazon S3 is one example of this. Information can still be kept separate and encrypted to keep it away from unauthorized users.

Both options have their merits. It really depends on your company, your budget, and your storage needs.

Public Cloud Backup Pros

Advantages of the public cloud include:

• Lower costs: Hardware or additional software is not needed, and you only pay for what you use.
• No maintenance: The public cloud service provider tackles the maintenance for you.
• Scalability: Grow your cloud needs alongside your business.
• High reliability: Data is still encrypted in a public cloud.

Public cloud options provide a cost-effective solution for moving data back and forth. They also provide security for data and the ability to easily scale as needed. Costs are fixed and visible.

Public Cloud Backup Cons

With many potential users, there can sometimes be resource demands that may slow data transfer speeds. Though security is always emphasized, companies may still have the perception that public clouds are less secure than a cloud that’s dedicated to their business alone.

Private Cloud Backup Pros

Advantages of the private cloud include:

• Flexibility: You can customize your cloud environment to meet specific business needs.
• Heightened control: Resources are not shared with others when you use a private cloud. This allows greater privacy as well.
• More scalability: Your company has a greater opportunity to scale with a custom, private cloud.

This option creates an entire cloud for a certain business. It 's less affordable than the public cloud option but provides higher performance all around and better peace of mind. A cloud dedicated to only your company can provide benefits in terms of flexibility as well.

Private Cloud Backup Cons

Higher costs can be one reason to stick to a public cloud if you're just beginning to migrate your business’s data and are seeking the best cloud backup option without quite knowing routine usage levels—unless you have the means and the need to sustain a private cloud. It also may be less feasible to go this route if your workload varies dramatically. If your storage needs change often but not regularly, you might be better off starting with a scalable public cloud.

Which Type Is Best for Enterprise Cloud Backups?

It really depends on your company's current and future cloud storage needs. Seagate experts would be happy to provide insight into the ideal options for your organization, including possible multicloud services, which allow access to both public and private clouds. This process allows more hands-on control of data coming and going as the company grows.

Which Type of Cloud Is Best for Your Business?

When seeking better cloud backups and enterprise support, a hybrid option may be the optimal course.

Cloud Backup Services

Seagate offers a variety of cloud storage backup services to keep information secure and easily retrievable.

This includes the means to archive individual files and items and perform both hardware- and software-based backups. Seagate also works with various storage partners to make this process even more efficient and customizable. These options can be for one-time use or delivered regularly as software as a service, and can include S3 object storage

Seagate also offers the benefits of Lyve Cloud storage, an innovative storage management solution that offers limitless options.

Cloud Backup Services Pricing

A common fear of investing in a cloud service is unexpected or hidden costs. Seagate puts effort into making sure pricing is always predictable and transparent and that customers know costs are scalable based on their long-term and short-term storage needs.

Lyve Cloud storage pricing starts at $7 per terabyte (TB) per month with options for 500TB storage. Higher capacity services are available for additional costs, but they also come with access to a dedicated customer success manager who can work with your company to create an optimal system and price list.

Learn more about Seagate’s Cloud Backup Solutions.