Learning the necessity for cloud and backup services

There are many instances when you tend to lose data from your computers, which call for implementing certain measures that can help in safeguarding the data.  An online business backup service works by transmitting data from one location, usually a business premises or office, to a storage facility offsite. Some services go one step further, in that all data is stored offsite to begin with a cloud service, and then periodically the data in the cloud service is also transferred to other storage facilities to provide even more data protection. As a matter of fact, these services are quite simple to implement and provide a feeling of security.

There are various forms of backup services that might range from uploading your telephone contacts from a smart phone, to individual PC backup, all the way up to backing up all the servers of a large multi-national corporation. Some companies need to back up their data every few seconds. Other companies with more static websites may only need to back up their data when a change is made, for example, when contact details are changed. Not all companies store their information online in the first place and will benefit from periodically transferring their information to online servers.

Information such as company accounts, medical records etc. although not publicly available online for obvious reasons, will need some kind of data backup service in the event that their own in-house IT systems break down and the data is no longer accessible. For sensitive information, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) can be used to enhance data security when backing up to a remote server.

One of the original costs of online data backup was the ever increasing expense of storage, due to hardware that needed to be purchased. Hosted data backup and storage services, such as the one recently offered by Mega Path, enable easy integration with existing IT infrastructures and industry standard software such as Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint. Data on servers and PCs can be remotely backed up and IT staff can schedule the entire process. Some business information archives can be huge, containing multiple petabytes of data, especially if they rely heavily on video and audio. With archives this big, disk storage is usually prohibitively expensive because it would mean doubling the existing server needs in some cases. Because of this, archive backups using tape are starting to play a big role again, as it is a less expensive medium than disk.