Cloud storage solutions

News: May 2012

Cloud storage solutions

According to a leading I.T. consulting firm, the personal cloud will replace the personal computer at the centre of users’ digital lives by 2014. So what will the impact be for businesses, and what products and services are likely to be made available in order to service the move to cloud computing?

Well, the impact for businesses will be quite positive – storage can be online rather than on a server, thereby reducing hardware and maintenance costs for business owners and managers.

In terms of services, Dropbox has already become popular with business users. Google is about to launch its own product which will compete in this space, called Google Drive. This will have an estimated 5GB of free storage space, charging only if users need more. Similarly, Dropbox offers 2.5GB of free storage with higher levels of storage available for a monthly fee.

Dropbox is quite user friendly and works by installing a Dropbox “folder” on to the client computer. Users can then simply drag and drop files into the folder in order to store them online. Google Drive will reportedly come with a local client and its interface will resemble Google Docs. At the time of writing, Google Drive is yet to launch.

Dropbox has more than 45m users and reportedly even turned down an acquisition offer from Apple.

Either service should work well for businesses. Those who require larger amounts of storage can simply sign up to a monthly fee package.