Business Cloud Storage Services Review

The hesitation many business owners once felt about entrusting their computerized records to an outside entity for storage is fading, as it should. When compared to the immense cost of carving out sufficient on-site storage and hiring the IT professionals who know how to manage it, entrusting your files to cloud storage companies is comparatively stress-free.

Filing information about taxes, clients and vendors somewhere other than at your company's headquarters also makes sense as an emergency preparedness measure. Servers can be damaged or lost with natural disasters, theft, computer crashes and security breaches. Any of these events can separate you from data you need to run your business, which can, within minutes, impact your ability to make money. With all of that in mind, cloud-based storage makes more sense than ever, and there is a wide range of companies that offer plans to suit different storage needs. We especially liked the business storage plans from Zoolz, OpenDrive and Mozy. Check out our articles about business cloud software to learn more.

Business Cloud Storage: What to Look For

The best business cloud storage services make it easy to safely and economically send all your files to the cloud in the first place and then continue to back up your organization's work now and into the future. The best of these companies have methods that make it easy and safe to share files with your employees and other business contacts across the globe – through password-protected emails, mobile phone apps and other methods. We looked at the following features while evaluating the best business cloud storage providers:

Storage Capacity
There are as many different storage needs as there are businesses. We had in mind a small business, with 5-10 employees, but we like the cloud storage providers that can accommodate those same businesses as they expand to 100 employees or more. We like the companies that have plans for the data you need to store, whether it is a terabyte, 10 terabytes or more.

Features
We looked for a collection of features that will make each part of the move to cloud storage smoother – from the initial transfer of your data to the ongoing backups. We looked for firms that make the most of bandwidth and of every gigabyte of storage with technologies like deduplication, idle backup and bandwidth throttling.

Security
One reason business owners are willing to send private information about their clients and other topics into the cloud is the precautions cloud services take to protect that information. The best business cloud services encrypt your information – some even do it twice – and also allow you to design your own encryption key. That means no one outside of your company can see your information, not even the folks who work for the business cloud service.

Collaboration
You, your employees and even your clients may need to remotely access information you store with your business cloud storage service. The best of these companies make that very easy and secure with mobile phone access, syncing capabilities and branding tools that can make a good impression on clients who need to use files stored in the cloud.

Help & Support
If you have questions regarding the security of your company's data, you will be in a hurry to get answers. The best business cloud services will have people ready to assist you by phone, email and live chat. The more hours of the day they can offer that, the better.

Business cloud storage is a good idea for any company that cannot afford to lose data to a natural disaster, theft or other unforeseen turn of events. In other words, it is a good idea for every business. We found some reliable services that can make the process of transitioning to cloud storage as painless as possible.

At TopTenREVIEWS We Do the Research So You Don’t Have To.™