
This can be anything from a data center owned by the provider closer to the customer's office to a local storage resource at the customer's site that can act as an intermediary for backups. That last one means that the cloud vendor automatically drops versions of a file or folder that are older than the time set by your IT administrator: any version older than six months, for example.Ĭloud backup providers can also let customers store frequently used data in fast-access locations. The management tools a cloud backup vendor provides are generally based on the customer's size and demand, changing bandwidth conditions, security requirements, and, in some cases, even variable data retention requirements.

However, be sure to factor the cost of these services into your overall backup pricing expectations. That's great from a flexibility standpoint. Although you can create servers in these clouds and use them as backup targets, most have dedicated storage services that resemble network drives. In that case, you'll find that many storage providers also sell infrastructure as a service (IaaS) options, like Amazon Web Services (AWS). Suppose your backup provider lets you choose a third-party storage target. That way, one customer's data doesn't bump into another's. Not only can they then manage the whole resource down to the byte level, but they can use multi-tenant architectures to make sure that accounts are entirely separate.

Rather than storing data locally in a centralized office, this new scenario calls for effective and reliable cloud backup services that provide customers with access to shared, software-defined storage infrastructure-essentially, storage that's managed as a virtual resource.Ī virtual, software-defined architecture lets providers create a large storage pool and parcel it out among their customers.

The widespread shift toward remote offices, distributed teams, and hybrid work calls for IT to take a new approach to data security.
