According
to SAP forecasts, the average annual growth of the cloud computing industry in
all business segments all over the world will be up to 25.43% by 2020, which is
ahead of the IT pace as a whole. Thus, the cloud solutions market will grow by
more than 2 times - from $22.6 to $48.33 million. What are the drivers of such
growth? What factors can prevent forecasts from coming true? Let's have a
closer look at the matter and try to answer all these questions.
The Use of Cloud Storage in Business
Back
in 2011, Time magazine called the economic model of the "sharing economy"
capable of changing the world. The main idea of the approach is to combine mass
demand and scattered supply using the principles of barter and rent. The
concept is manifested in the most diverse areas of the digital business and
human activity in general. Just like services from Best vpn rating, the contribution of the concept was just impossible to
measure and estimate.
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Today,
everyone knows global online services based on the "shared consumption" model;
among them, there are Uber, Airbnb, and many others. In fact, it is simply
impossible to find a company that would effectively function and collect data
without using cloud storage services and ensuring privacy of all the information.
The
cloud-based concept is associated with the so-called cloud computing, whose
inherent requirements covers:
- the platform availability from
anywhere in the world if the Internet connection is in place;
- continuity and reliability of the
access to both services and data;
- high bandwidth and ease of
administration;
- the ability to quickly scale the
volume of IT resources;
- automatic metering of consumed
power;
- affordable cost depending on could
space used.
In
other words, without owning their own computing resources, the company can use
external ones to solve the company's tasks from anywhere in the world and at
any time.
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As
a rule, with the help of "clouds," both large enterprises and ordinary users
solve the problem of storing large amounts of data. It is absolutely possible
since cloud storage allows you to remotely accumulate, store and process any
amount of information without purchasing expensive equipment and software
licenses. Such a service is demanded by individual entrepreneurs (designers,
marketing specialists, programmers, HR specialists) as well as small and
medium-sized enterprises, primarily in areas of the economy with the high
competition rate:
- retail trade (38% of the
market);
- logistics and transportation
services (12% of the market);
- media companies (10% of the
market);
- digital economy and
telecommunications companies;
- credit and financial sector;
- sectors of the fuel and energy
complex and utilities;
- small and medium-sized
manufacturing enterprises;
- medicine and pharmaceuticals.
According
to expert forecasts, the main drivers for the development of the cloud services
market will be small and medium businesses, which will soon need some external
platforms to support their informational architecture. Thus, cloud technologies
will allow them to significantly reduce the cost of the material and technical
base and provide flexibility in resource management.
Cloud Storage Features
Speaking
of cloud storage, many people estimate the service capabilities by the amount
of space involved, but this is not the only parameter characterizing the
service. The speed of information exchange (file upload/download) between local
client servers and cloud storage is also worth taking into account. The maximum
amount of transferred files (usually from 5 GB to 5 TB) should be checked as
well. The level of online safety of transmitted and stored data. The
integration and compatibility of cloud storage with various software and
hardware platforms, databases (relational, NoSQL), as well as support for
various protocols (OpenStack Swift, Amazon S3, RBD), are to be considered as well.
Cloud Storage Organization Type
When
using cloud storage solutions, you have several alternatives on how to organize
the setting so that it meets all your needs and requirements:
- file storage option - suitable
for multimedia arrays or personal user directories, large content
repositories, development environment;
- object storage option -
suitable for importing unstructured data (for example, media files and web
materials) from other storages for the purpose of analytics, data
migration, backup, archiving;
- block storage option - suitable
for processing arrays of financial and other information requiring complex
calculations, for locating ERP systems, as well as for any frequently
rewritable data;
- aggregate storage option - a
variant of block storage, suitable for compact storage of information that
does not require large overwrites.
Before
you start using a cloud storage service, it is important you check all its
characteristics and decide on the cloud organization type.
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