The Cost Of The Cloud: How To Save Money On Data Storage
Cloud data storage has become a vital resource for most businesses. Every company is generating vast volumes of data and they want to keep hold of it. Data analysis can be an incredibly profitable practice, giving businesses insights into how their customers interact with the company and highlighting bottlenecks in common processes. Holding on to the data costs money, however, whether you rely on a remote cloud service or store your data in house.
It is possible to save money on cloud data storage, but you need to change how you use the service and how often. Taking a fresh look at how your business manages and stores its data can create major cost savings that can be invested elsewhere in the company. Keep reading if you want to know how to reduce your cloud service costs without losing any of your valuable data, or reducing your access to it.
Save More With Less Data
Big data comes with big costs. The more you have, the more you will pay to store it. Whether you rely on a cloud server to store your bits and bytes, or you use your own hard drives and networks to keep your data safe, as the volume of data increases so do your costs. If a business changes its data management practices it can reduce the volume of data without losing any information, saving both money and time.
This is where data compression becomes valuable to businesses. You can reduce the quantity of your data without losing any quality. It allows you to save money on data storage services and infrastructure without losing any precious information that you may require later on. SmallPDF has an excellent and efficient PDF compressor program that is perfect for this task. Compress PDF does exactly what you think it does, it reduces the size of PDF files by as much as 99%, giving you back gigabytes of data storage space. Making this program a part of your regular data management process can give you back terabytes of space either on the cloud or your in house data servers.
Cheaper Clouds For Brighter Finances
Businesses that use cloud storage services need to pay closer attention to the terms of service. Many cloud service providers charge per gigabyte of data transfer. Multiple users create multiple streams of data, each one racking up your monthly or annual costs. This can be detrimental to big businesses that have dozens of data-driven workers accessing their remote files. It doesn’t have to be this way though.
The cloud service sector is incredibly competitive. There are now thousands of companies, including some big names like Microsoft, offering data storage for businesses and you should leverage this to your advantage. Renegotiate a better deal with your existing provider, or look for someone new that can provide the same level of service at a cheaper price. Big businesses have a massive advantage here, as the more data you generate the lower the potential cost per byte is. Shopping around can save your company a huge amount of money that can be invested elsewhere, including on in house data servers so you can store your most crucial data yourself and reduce your reliance on a third party. Never underestimate the value your business has to your suppliers. They will work hard to keep you on their books and your data on their servers.
Limit Your User Base
Having lots of access to your data comes at a cost. The more user accounts you have on a cloud server, the more data is going to be transferred between your business and the cloud, pushing up costs. If you limit the user base you can limit your exposure to added expenses without suffering a drop in the quality of your service. Try to use in house servers for day to day data activities, and then back up your data to the cloud through just a few accounts.
This is a great tactic for small businesses that cannot afford a big bill for cloud data storage. You can place one team member in charge of monitoring data storage and backups, and make them the sole account with access to the cloud. Through careful data monitoring and sensible file sharing practices, you can utilize the infrastructure you have first, and rely on the cloud for longer term data storage and off site backups. Fewer users and fewer data transfers to the cloud can yield huge cost savings for businesses of any size.
Finding The Right Balance
The difference in cost and convenience between in house data storage and using a cloud is difficult to assess. Much depends on what type of business is using the service and how much data it generates. Cloud computing can certainly be more cost-effective if used responsibly, but that costs time and time is money too. For most companies, finding a balance between using on site data storage and remote solutions is the most cost-effective way to manage your data.
Some files are going to be less important than others. Perhaps only some of your data should make it to the cloud and the rest should stay on site? Every business with IT infrastructure in place should be making regular backups of its data, essentially doubling the amount of space it needs. Should all this data be stored on a remote cloud or do you have other options? By striking a better balance between in house, on site data storage and remote cloud servers you can save your business both time and money which can be directed to other departments in the company.
The cloud is becoming an important resource for every type of business, but it is also becoming a large regular expense. Do not wait for the invoice to arrive, and start streamlining your data storage today. If you change just a few common practices you can make some huge savings on the balance sheet. Use the advice in this guide to restructure your data processes and reduce your exposure to expensive cloud data storage services.
