10 benefits of using cloud storage

 Usability and accessibility

 Security
 Cost-efficient
 Convenient sharing of files
 Automation
 Multiple users
 Synchronization
 Convenience
 Scalable
 Disaster recovery

1. Usability and accessibility

Most all of the cloud services come with an easy-to-use user interface and provide a feature of
drag and drop. For instance, you can think of Google drive from Google or iDrive from Apple.
They both have a simple interface, and you can easily upload your file on your online drive
without any expert knowledge. For example, if you have saved a file in drive using a mobile
device, you can retrieve that file using a computer or any other device with internet connectivity.
It doesn’t matter where you are right now. If you have a good internet connection, you can
access your files, which is saved online somewhere on the data centers.

2. Security
If anything is associated with the internet, then safety becomes our primary concern, and mostly
the big and small businesses use cloud storage services, so before they choose a cloud service for
their business, they make sure that service provided giving them better security.

The cloud storage saves your data across the redundant servers, so even if one of the data centers
gets collapsed, your data will be managed by the other data centers, which make your data safe
and supervised. If all the data centers of the storage provider get collapse or destroyed, then only
your data could be lost, and this is entirely impossible phenomena because a cloud storage
service is formed of thousands of data centers.

Some of the cloud storage vendors keep the copies of your data at the different data centers, so
even if the data get lost or corrupted at the server, the backup must be there.

3. Cost-efficient
By only using the cloud storage service, the business outsources the storage problem. By using
online data storage, the enterprise reduces the expenses of internal resources. With this
technology, the company itself does not need any inner power and support to manage and store
their data; the cloud storage vendor handles all. There are some cloud storage services provided
which give cloud storage for a lifetime at an affordable price, which is a win-win offer for small
business and individual users.

4. Convenient sharing of files

Every cloud storage service provides the file-sharing features, which helps you to share your file
with other users. You can either send a file to another user or invite multiple users to view your
data. Mostly all the vendors provide a cloud environment in which two users using the same
cloud service can share their data, though there are only a few service vendors that offer the
cross-platform file sharing features.

5. Automation
Cloud storage works like a hard disk on your system, and if you want to store any file in the
cloud, it will not temper any ongoing task. There may be more than one user using a cloud
storage service, and the current responsibility of one user would not affect the task of another
since it is all is managed and automated by the cloud vendor.

6. Multiple users
The same cloud environment can have more than one use associated with it. With cloud storage,
multiple users can collaborate with the common file. For instance, you can give access to your
files to multiple users so they can access and edit your file. The authorized person can access
your file from any part of the world in real-time.

7. Synchronization
Every storage vendor gives the sync feature. With synchronization, you can sync the cloud
storage data with any device you want. As we have discussed, we can access our data from any
device and any part of the world, but this accessibility is done with the help of synchronization.
With proper credentials, you can log in to your subscribed storage service with any device, and
you will be able to access your all data that have been stored in that cloud storage. There is no
need to copy data from one device to another, but you need a good internet connection to have
access to all of your files.

8. Convenient
You do not need any hard disk or flash drive to access or view your data — all is done online.
However, if you want to download any file or data, you may require a storage device or you can
download that data in your device. But if you want to surf your data, then it would not occupy
any space on your device. Even if you make any changes to the data, all the changes will reflect
on every device which is synced with that storage service. You do not require any expert or
technical knowledge to use the cloud storage service. All the heavy lifting is managed by the
vendor itself.
9. Scalable
Cloud storage is scalable and flexible. If the current plan of storage is not enough, you can
upgrade the service plan. And you do not need to move any data from one location to another,
the extra space will be added to your storage environment with some extra features.

10. Disaster recovery

Every business has a backup storage plan where they store all the copies of their data. If they
encounter any collapse or loss of data problem, they can retrieve data from their backup plan,
and that is why cloud storage is the best method to deal with this problem. Cloud storage service
provides the best platform for disaster recovery data. Any business can use cloud storage as a
data backup storage, so if there is a data loss, the company can retrieve backup data from the
cloud.

Drawbacks to using cloud storage

1. Drag and drop
The drag and drop option may move your original data from one location to another, so make
sure instead of using the drag and drop option. Simply use the copy and paste method.

2. Internet dependency
Without the internet, you cannot access your data while downloading the file from cloud storage.
If there is an internet failure, it might corrupt the data which you were downloading.

3. Data security and privacy

Many cloud storage vendors lack data security and privacy fields, and there are many cases
where the data from the cloud storage gets leaked.

4. Expensive cloud storages

Most of the best cloud services are expensive; this is because they are specially designed for
business purposes. If you go for a less expensive plan, you might have to compromise with some
of the features.
Cloud Service Provider
Cloud Service providers (CSP) offers various services such as Software as a Service, Platform
as a service, Infrastructure as a service, network services, business applications, mobile
applications, and infrastructure in the cloud. The cloud service providers host these services in
a data center, and users can access these services through cloud provider companies using an
Internet connection.

There are the following Cloud Service Providers Companies -

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a secure cloud service platform provided by Amazon. It
offers various services such as database storage, computing power, content delivery, Relational
Database, Simple Email, Simple Queue, and other functionality to increase the organization's
growth.

Features of AWS

AWS provides various powerful features for building scalable, cost-effective, enterprise
applications. Some important features of AWS is given below-

o AWS is scalable because it has an ability to scale the computing resources up or down
according to the organization's demand.
o AWS is cost-effective as it works on a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
o It provides various flexible storage options.
o It offers various security services such as infrastructure security, data encryption,
monitoring & logging, identity & access control, penetration testing, and DDoS attacks.
o It can efficiently manage and secure Windows workloads.

2. Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is also known as Windows Azure. It supports various operating systems,
databases, programming languages, frameworks that allow IT professionals to easily build,
deploy, and manage applications through a worldwide network. It also allows users to create
different groups for related utilities.

Features of Microsoft Azure

o Microsoft Azure provides scalable, flexible, and cost-effective
o It allows developers to quickly manage applications and websites.
o It managed each resource individually.
o Its IaaS infrastructure allows us to launch a general-purpose virtual machine in different
platforms such as Windows and Linux.
 o It offers a Content Delivery System (CDS) for delivering the Images, videos, audios,
and applications.

3. Google Cloud Platform

Google cloud platform is a product of Google. It consists of a set of physical devices, such as
computers, hard disk drives, and virtual machines. It also helps organizations to simplify the
migration process.

Features of Google Cloud

o Google cloud includes various big data services such as Google BigQuery, Google
CloudDataproc, Google CloudDatalab, and Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
o It provides various services related to networking, including Google Virtual Private
Cloud (VPC), Content Delivery Network, Google Cloud Load Balancing, Google Cloud
Interconnect, and Google Cloud DNS.
o It offers various scalable and high-performance
o GCP provides various serverless services such as Messaging, Data Warehouse,
Database, Compute, Storage, Data Processing, and Machine learning (ML)
o It provides a free cloud shell environment with Boost Mode.

4. IBM Cloud Services

IBM Cloud is an open-source, faster, and more reliable platform. It is built with a suite of
advanced data and AI tools. It offers various services such as Infrastructure as a
service, Software as a service, and platform as a service. You can access its services like
compute power, cloud data & Analytics, cloud use cases, and storage networking using internet
connection.

Feature of IBM Cloud

o IBM cloud improves operational efficiency.
o Its speed and agility improve the customer's satisfaction.
o It offers Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), as well as
Software as a Service (SaaS)
o It offers various cloud communications services to our IT environment.

5. VMware Cloud
VMware cloud is a Software-Defined Data Center (SSDC) unified platform for the Hybrid
Cloud. It allows cloud providers to build agile, flexible, efficient, and robust cloud services.
Features of VMware
o VMware cloud works on the pay-as-per-use model and monthly subscription
o It provides better customer satisfaction by protecting the user's data.
o It can easily create a new VMware Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) cluster on
AWS cloud by utilizing a RESTful API.
o It provides flexible storage options. We can manage our application storage on a per-
application basis.
o It provides a dedicated high-performance network for managing the application traffic
and also supports multicast networking.
o It eliminates the time and cost complexity.

6. Oracle cloud
Oracle cloud platform is offered by the Oracle Corporation. It combines Platform as a Service,
Infrastructure as a Service, Software as a Service, and Data as a Service with cloud
infrastructure. It is used to perform tasks such as moving applications to the cloud, managing
development environment in the cloud, and optimize connection performance.

Features of Oracle cloud

o Oracle cloud provides various tools for build, integrate, monitor, and secure the
applications.
o Its infrastructure uses various languages including, Java, Ruby, PHP, Node.js.
o It integrates with Docker, VMware, and other DevOps tools.
o Oracle database not only provides unparalleled integration between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS,
but also integrates with the on-premises platform to improve operational efficiency.
o It maximizes the value of IT investments.
o It offers customizable Virtual Cloud Networks, firewalls, and IP addresses to securely
support private networks.

7. Red Hat
Red Hat virtualization is an open standard and desktop virtualization platform produced by Red
Hat. It is very popular for the Linux environment to provide various infrastructure solutions for
virtualized servers as well as technical workstations. Most of the small and medium-sized
organizations use Red Hat to run their organizations smoothly. It offers higher density, better
performance, agility, and security to the resources. It also improves the organization's economy
by providing cheaper and easier management capabilities.

Features of Rad Hat

o Red Hat provides secure, certified, and updated container images via the Red Hat
Container catalog.
 o Red Hat cloud includes OpenShift, which is an app development platform that allows
developers to access, modernize, and deploy apps
o It supports up to 16 virtual machines, each having up to 256GB of RAM.
o It offers better reliability, availability, and serviceability.
o It provides flexible storage capabilities, including very large SAN-based storage, better
management of memory allocations, high availability of LVMs, and support for
particularly roll-back.
o In the Desktop environment, it includes features like New on-screen keyboard, GNOME
software, which allows us to install applications, update application, as well as extended
device support.

8. DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is the unique cloud provider that offers computing services to the organization. It
was founded in 2011 by Moisey Uretsky and Ben. It is one of the best cloud provider that allows
us to manage and deploy web applications.

Features of DigitalOcean
o It uses the KVM hypervisor to allocate physical resources to the virtual servers.
o It provides high-quality performance.
o It offers a digital community platform that helps to answer queries and holding
feedbacks.
o It allows developers to use cloud servers to quickly create new virtual machines for their
projects.
o It offers one-click apps for droplets. These apps include MySQL, Docker, MongoDB,
Wordpress, PhpMyAdmin, LAMP stack, Ghost, and Machine Learning.

9. Rackspace
Rackspace offers cloud computing services such as hosting web applications, Cloud Backup,
Cloud Block Storage, Databases, and Cloud Servers. The main aim to designing Rackspace is to
easily manage private and public cloud deployments. Its data centers operating in the USA, UK,
Hong Kong, and Australia.

Features of Rackspace
o Rackspace provides various tools that help organizations to collaborate and communicate
more efficiently.
o We can access files that are stored on the Rackspace cloud drive, anywhere, anytime
using any device.
o It offers 6 globally data centers.
o It can manage both virtual servers and dedicated physical servers on the same network.
o It provides better performance at a lower cost.
10. Alibaba Cloud
Alibaba Cloud is used to develop data management and highly scalable cloud computing
services. It offers various services, including Elastic Computing, Storage, Networking, Security,
Database Services, Application Services, Media Services, Cloud Communication, and Internet of
Things.

Features of Alibaba Cloud

o Alibaba cloud offers a suite of global cloud computing services for both international
customers and Alibaba Group's e-commerce ecosystem.
o Its services are available on a pay-as-per-use basis.
o It globally deals with its 14 data centers.
o It offers scalable and reliable data storage.