Microsoft OneDrive is a hosted storage platform that offers cloud storage to anyone with a Microsoft account. As cloud storage goes, this is one of the oldest and most respected platforms. Many other cloud storage services have followed their lead over the years, so they do represent a well-established option. In this article, we will cover some of the ways in which hosted cloud storage of this kind can benefit your business.
A lot of people don’t understand the difference between OneDrive and OneDrive Business. While a OneDrive account is available to pretty much anyone, a business account is not. The OneDrive Business service is much more comprehensive and offers a much more detailed degree of data management. It can also handle much more data volume than a regular OneDrive plan. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with all the services offered by a OneDrive Business account before you buy one.
Better Coordination
In some ways, a business might be described as a group of people who perform different jobs while working toward the same goal. That goal is, obviously, the success of the business. However, there is still the fact that everyone is doing different jobs. It can be very hard to coordinate that many tasks and make sure that everyone is working efficiently toward the goal. In most cases, the main obstacle to coordination is poor communication. You’ve got people spread out in different rooms, floors, or locations, and they don’t stay in constant contact.
With a cloud-based service like OneDrive, you can eliminate that issue once and for all. You can make sure that everyone has access to the same pool of data at all times. Whether it’s your assistant in the office or a person on the job site with a mobile device, everyone is literally on the same page at all times. While these systems do not eliminate the problem of human error, they certainly make those errors less likely to happen, and easier to correct when they do happen.
Near-Limitless Storage
It is no exaggeration to say that a large business tends to accumulate a lot of data. Over the years and decades (maybe even centuries, in a few cases), the sheer amount of data that can be stored can be staggering. In the past, businesses were limited to physical storage (usually paper files and folders), and that made the problem even worse. They would deal with this problem by retaining records for only a certain time and then disposing of them. While this was an effective solution, it deprives a company of the long-term records that might be needed at some point.
Thankfully, the digital age offers much more effective solutions, but limitations still exist. The average computer hard drive holds somewhere between 500 GB and 1 TB (as of this writing). When it comes to business usage, that’s not very much at all. External hard drives aren’t terribly expensive either, except for one little problem: You are going to need a whole lot of them. That means a lot of money and a lot of storage space. Those hard drives will need secure storage, which also adds to their overall cost.
A cloud-based service like OneDrive gives you all the storage space that you need. The cloud, by its very nature, is incredibly vast. There is no need to worry about running out of hard drive space or sorting and organizing huge closets full of hard drives.
Efficient Information-Gathering
Much like any government, a well-run business needs to gather intelligence in order to safeguard its interests. Of course, we aren’t talking about any kind of covert spying here, but every company needs to have people that can verify information when necessary. For instance, let’s say you run an insurance company. Whenever someone files a claim, you need to send someone to inspect the damage, check the police report, and obtain any other relevant information.
By using the cloud, you won’t have to wait for that inspector to return with the information. They can post photos and short videos to the cloud for all to see, disseminating the information far more quickly than normal. This means that the next step of the claim process can begin sooner. The bottom line is this: more efficient information-gathering usually amounts to less delay and more efficiency in your company’s operations.
No Worries About Ransomware
Ransomware is one of the most dangerous kinds of hacking attacks. Unfortunately, it has also become all too common. By using a special kind of malware, intrusive entities can lock you out of your computer systems. They will then demand some kind of ransom payment before the system is unlocked. Cloud storage is the most efficient way to prevent this kind of cybercrime, as everything is backed up in a secure location.
Protection Against Data Loss
When you store all your company’s data on physical media (like hard drives or discs), there is one big problem: All physical media is vulnerable to physical damage. Extreme temperatures, water leaks, humidity issues, dropping, impact, and a whole host of other issues can cause your physical storage media to be ruined. However, those who have invested in cloud storage won’t have this problem.
Even if every computer in your office is somehow wiped clean, you will experience no data loss when using a cloud service like OneDrive. That’s because every file is backed up at an outside location. This can be a great advantage if your systems get infected with some kind of virus or malware. You can just wipe the whole system and start again. You will experience some downtime as the system is reinstalled and reconfigured, but your data will remain intact.
Conclusion
OneDrive is definitely one of the best cloud-based storage options out there. While there are many others, there are some benefits when you stick with an established name. Cloud storage seems to be the way of the future, at least when it comes to large-scale data management. If you find this to be interesting and would like to learn more, please fill out the contact form.