Every business owner or manager knows just how important it is to backup essential data and when a business relies on technology to contact clients and providers, intermediate communication and store files, then almost all data is essential for business, which makes backup services critical. Cloud backup refers to protecting data by storing it on a remote, online storage space, called broadly a cloud. A recent study has shown that a high percentage of small and medium sized businesses still experience data loss because they use direct attached storage, instead of cloud services. Data loss may be crucial to a business and many small companies never recover after such an event, reason for which it is important to research one's options when it comes to storage and data backup and find the many benefits that come with cloud computing and backup, as there are quite many of them.


First of all, cloud backup services offer you improved protection for your data, ensuring that all data is recoverable. This is possible due to advanced encryption and security technologies that lay at the basis of cloud based data backup. As small or even medium sized businesses don't have a rich IT budget, affordability is important to them and cloud services provide very low total cost of ownership. Cloud storage and backup is highly affordable and subscription prices are usually for full year lengths, which means expense predictability, another important advantage for small to medium size companies. Another important benefit of cloud services is represented by ease of use, as such services offer anytime, anywhere type of access. Furthermore, with cloud based data, you will be able to enjoy user friendly interfaces and easy to use web based management systems. Minimal maintenance is necessary for those devices that are used for data synchronization to the cloud. Due to this great convenience, cloud based solutions are fast to implement, which is yet another important advantage. In a matter of minutes, business can enjoy deployment of data and simple setup and configuration. Ongoing management is not the only aspect that offers such a convenience, as the restoration process is also very simple.

The most important benefit of cloud backup is perhaps its high level of flexibility. As businesses grow or experience decreases, their IT needs change, but cloud based storages are highly scalable and can increase or decrease their capacity fast and easy, depending on your exact needs. If you resort to cloud services, you will also be able to save money on energy, as you won't require large server rooms and power consumption. Clouds are perfect for businesses with green IT initiatives. The bottom line is that cloud based backup services are automatic, simple and cheap, presenting increased protection for business data, all the advantages that any company would want from a backup service. It is definitely an alternative worth considering for small to medium sized companies.