Twelve Cloud Storage Services for Work and Play
Many small to midsize businesses have considered the cloud for data storage if for no other reason than that they think it will be cheaper and require less internal time and effort from an already taxed IT staff. However, what many fail to realize is that Internet connectivity issues can cause slowness among those uploading and downloading data to and from the cloud provider. But another option may bring a hybrid of the best of both worlds—internal network-attached storage (NAS) and cloud storage—to SMBs.
Egnyte and Synology have announced a joint venture that will provide SMBs with an integrated cloud/NAS backup product. With this solution, the Egnyte application runs on the Synology NAS, which is on the LAN. This way, the software will synchronize files between the internal NAS and the Egnyte cloud.
When used together, the solution allows fast local access to files on the NAS, while mobile employees can access files from the cloud remotely from just about anywhere.
According to TechRepublic’s Mary Shacklett, the union of Egnyte and Synology solutions provides answers to many SMB challenges:
This gives the SMB the ability to backup and manage data both locally and in the cloud. It also provides greater redundancy for overall data backup and management. This “hybrid” combination of in-house and cloud-based management of data is compelling for SMBs, which today should be worrying about regulatory compliance, governance and security more than ever. It also capitalizes on the fact that most SMBs already have hard dollar investments in NAS, coupled with the fact that buying NAS really doesn’t cost that much.
However, Forbes’ Ben Kepes thinks that adoption and drivers for such a solution for SMBs may not be long-lived:
It seems to me that the drivers for enterprise demands for hybrid storage are likely to be longer lasting than for SMBs. Enterprises have significant compliance reasons to demand some or all of their data remain on-premises. They also have massive investments in on-premises storage. A NAS however only costs a few hundred dollars, it’s not enough money to make businesses stop and think about sunk cost issues.
But for those companies that are leery of having all their data in the cloud or that are required by compliance issues to retain some data on-site, this solution seems to be the perfect union.
