It is heady times fans of cloud storage these days. In case you haven’t been paying attention, the cloud file storage corner of the IT universe has heated up for the past couple of months. Dropbox, Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) have been leapfrogging each other in an apparent effort to buy mind-share.
Dropbox recently announced that its Dropbox Pro plan will now offer 1TB of capacity for $9.99 a month, or $99 for a full-year subscription. Paul Mah at FierceCIO says this is a significant reduction, especially when recent monthly Dropbox Pro storage prices were:
$9.99 for 100GB,- $19.99 for 200GB, and
- $49.99 for 500GB of storage.
Mr. Mah, says the latest move by Dropbox allows them to stay on par with the latest price cuts from Apple iCloud in September, Google Drive in June, and Microsoft OneDrive in May.
In September Apple updated its porous iCloud storage plans. CNET says the basic 5 gigabytes of storage remains free, though prices for paid tiers were significantly reduced and larger storage options were made available. CNET says the new monthly iCloud storage costs are:
Free for 5GB,- $0.99 for 20GB,
- $3.99 for 200GB,
- $9.99 for 500GB and
- $19.99 1TB
Previously, 10GB of storage would have cost $20 per year, 20GB for $40 per year, and 50GB for $100 per year.
At Microsoft, the cloud-based file storage game also changed. According to Redmond Magazine, the improvements include a new file load limit (10GB max), an easier way to share links to OneDrive folders, and support for folder drag-and-drop operations using the Google Chrome browser. Microsoft is also working on speeding up the synchronization of files with OneDrive. The updated per month prices for OneDrive are:
Free for 15GB,- $1.99 for 100GB,
- $3.99 for 200GB,
- $5.99 1TB
In an attempt to trump MSFT, Google released Google Drive for Work, a paid service targeted at business users and priced at $10 per user per month. FierceCIO noted that the new service offers unlimited storage, the ability to upload files of up to 5TB in size, and access to productivity apps such as Docs, Sheets, Slides, Hangouts, and Sites. Importantly, Google also announced that files uploaded to Google Drive can be encrypted, and will stay that way while in transit or when at rest on its servers. Here are the current prices per month for Google Drive space pace according to CNET:
Free for 15GB,- $1.99 for 100GB,
- $9.99 for 1TB,
- $99.99 10TB,
- $199.99 for 20TB and
- $299.99 for 30TB.
Mr. Mah argues that price drops are good news for consumers. The extra space would certainly be useful for users who rely on it for long-term file archives or backing up large local files. The author correctly argues that 1TB of online storage does not deliver the same value to business users. The reason is simple: cloud storage is a terrible backup solution for large volumes of data, especially if you need to get it back quickly.
Mr, Mah observed that cloud storage vendors do not share information about any guaranteed uploading or downloading speeds when using them. This is noteworthy considering that 1TB of files can take a really long time to transfer over the Internet.
He explains that downloading 1TB worth of files with zero data overhead–which is impossible, across a reasonable 10Mbps broadband connection would take over 222 hours, or close to 10 days of continuous downloading. You can be assured that real-life conditions on your broadband connection would likely mean that this is at least doubled or even tripled.
And that’s assuming that the cloud service provider isn’t experiencing any congestion on its end, which is not something that cloud vendors are offering any guarantees on. Notwithstanding that, you can check out this nifty online calculator.
So while there is no question about the value of cloud storage for data synchronization across multiple devices, it is important for businesses to understand that the cloud just isn’t ideal for data backup. Mr. Mah concludes that users should use their 1TB of cloud space for all its worth, but users and firms need to do proper local backups for important files, as well as those that need to be restored quickly.
Related articles
- Protect your business with cloud backup (simplybusiness.co.uk)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.