The cloud, i.e. servers and databases that are accessed via the internet rather than locally, is used to support a range of disparate needs, including consumer storage, disaster recovery for businesses, and the provision of advanced hardware at a distance. However, scepticism over the use of the cloud for essential tasks has never quite gone away, even if that kind of distrust has been in decline since the mid-2010s.

Data Recovery

Back in 2015, the IT services company ISG pointed to three reasons why faith in the cloud seemed shaky across the business world. These were a belief that data could be easily lost, an over-reliance on the internet (and the potential downtime that comes with it), and a perceived low return on investment value. Today, many of those concerns have been muted by the fact that almost all businesses use the cloud in some way or another.

The concept of data recovery via the cloud is an evolution of an old idea. A good 90% of companies create backups of important data, according to the Acronis website. In smaller organisations, this may be done via more analogue means, such as with secondary hard drives. Unfortunately, storage tech can fail. Tom’s Hardware claims that Seagate hard drives have both the highest and lowest failure rate on the market, at 0.11% and 4.79%, depending on the model.

With this in mind, some tech companies recommend that both consumers and businesses keep a tech survival kit handy. An infographic created by ExpressVPN insists that this variant on a go-bag or bug-out bag contains scans of important documents on a USB flash drive, as well as tools for basic repairs. A portable WiFi hotspot should also be included to help cover any outages.

Extra Functionality

Of course, a tech survival kit is more a plaster over a broken leg for a massive enterprise, which brings us back to data recovery via the cloud. Research from UniTrends suggests that only 7%of businesses found that Disaster Recovery as a Service, or DRaaS, didn’t work for them. In comparison, sources online indicate that backup plans made by individual IT managers tend to lose at least some of the data they’ve backed up.

The question that needs to be answered is, just how much cloud does somebody actually need? Alternatively, how much of a company’s day-to-day activities should be surrendered to outside providers?

People looking for consumer cloud packages can find advice on this topic on sites like CreativeBloq. For businesses, the answer will differ from one company to another but it comes down to a balance between the amount of control required by managers and how much extra functionality an organisation actually needs. For instance, transferring as many tasks as possible to the cloud will effectively add one or more third parties into a company’s process – and more links that could potentially fail.

As with many solutions sold to businesses, like CMS software, it’s important not to buy more stuff than is actually required. The cloud does present plenty of opportunities for modern companies, though, whether that’s as a safeguard against disaster or a source of additional computing power.