Cloud Hosting

Storing your most sensitive files locally on a hard drive is still (and probably always will be) the logical thing to do. But its not always the most convenient, which is why most of us look to cloud storage as a secondary option. It has its own set of benefits: its reasonably affordable, it makes sharing files easier, its ubiquitous across most operating systems and devices, and its just really nice to have a backup when your hard drive dies.

There are several services to pick from, and some of them are pretty similar. While common at their core offerings (to give you copious amounts of space to store files online), only a few go beyond that by giving users more free storage upfront, useful online productivity tools, and the option to expand storage well above the 1TB mark. Here are the most popular services and how to determine which one is right for you.

If you have a Google account, you also have 15GB of free cloud storage on Drive that never expires. What you choose to back up is obviously up to you, but Drive works particularly well with documents, allowing real-time collaboration and editing in plain text, spreadsheets, and presentations. Emails and other files received through Gmail will count against your storage, but keeping your inbox under control can keep more of the complimentary 15GB of storage open for use.

For some, Drives tools, like Docs, Sheets, and Slides, completely erase the need to pay for a Microsoft Office license. Your mileage may vary depending on if youre a power user, but beyond just storing photos, videos, and music, Drive gets the nod for the load of extra features stacked on top of the free storage.

Android users can back up their phone state, including SMS messages, apps, settings, and call settings, to Drive, which is useful should you ever need to factory reset your device.

Apps: Google Drive is available as an app on iOS and Android, and its easy to access, edit, and share files with others. On desktop, you can edit files in your browser, and Googles Backup and Sync app automatically shifts files (and whole directories, like your computers documents folder) over to your cloud storage.

Price to upgrade: Googles new One service costs $1.99 per month to add 100GB of cloud storage to your account. If you need more to store and transfer large files, 2TB is $9.99 per month, and One works its way up to 30TB per month for $299.99. (If you have a need for 30TB of cloud storage, wheel down to Amazons Drive below.)

Not to be confused with Google One and Google Drive (tech folks are getting really creative with product names), if you have a Microsoft or Outlook account, youll start off with 5GB of cloud storage for free. Like Google Drive, OneDrives starter tier allows for storage and document editing and collaboration via Office Online.

Paying $6.99 per month or $69.99 on an annual basis will grant you access to 1TB of cloud storage as well as the full suite of Office 365 apps for download on your computer.

For Windows 10 users, OneDrive is embedded in the operating system by default. Its a good feature for subscribers that minimizes the chances of losing precious documents due to forgetting to back them up. Microsoft aggressively tries to funnel you into using OneDrive, which is good for subscribers but bad for everyone else.

Apps: OneDrive is available on iOS, Android, and Microsofts own Windows Phone mobile OS. If you pay at least $6.99 per month, youll have access to apps like Microsoft Word on your phone and tablet, as well as on your PC or macOS computer, where OneDrive automatically saves your files.

Price to upgrade: If you simply want more storage, $1.99 per month gets you 50GB of storage. (Thats half the cloud storage granted by Google One for this price.) The highest tier that the service offers is appealing for families with up to six members starting on October 2nd, thanks to a recent change: it costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 annually for 6TB of cloud storage that can be split into 1TB chunks for each user. This tier also grants each user an Office 365 license for use on a computer, as well as a tablet and phone.

If you have an Amazon account, 5GB of cloud storage is available for use. For Prime subscribers, Amazon offers unlimited photo storage even at the $8.99-per-month tier of the service that grants access to Prime Video, but it doesnt include expedited shipping and the other myriad benefits.

Unlike Google or Microsofts services, Amazon Drive doesnt allow you to edit documents beyond renaming them, so real-time collaboration is out of the question here. For now, this is just a bare-bones cloud storage solution, which might be all you need.

Apps: Amazon Drive is available as an app for iOS and Android, giving you quick access to the items stored in cloud storage. If youre working on macOS or Windows, a version of the app behaves similarly, but it also lets you sync folders to automatically upload them to the cloud without any action on the part of the user.

Price to upgrade: Amazon offers several upgrades that are priced competitively to Google One. For $11.99 per year, you can upgrade your account to 100GB. If you want more, 1TB costs $59.99 per year, and 2TB doubles that price. If your work requires a lot of cloud storage, Amazon Drive is the way to go, since it offers 30TB of storage for $1,799.70 per year compared to Googles price of approximately $3,588 for the same amount.

Everyone with an Apple ID gets 5GB of iCloud storage, which can be easily accessed on your iPhone, iPad, or via the iCloud site.

Apples cloud storage solution is good at the basics if youre just keen on storing your documents, photos, and videos. Like Googles service, Apple offers its own suite of productivity apps (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) to all iCloud users, complete with real-time collaboration across devices.

For some, iClouds advantage over the services will be that its dead simple to use and looks like iOS on the web. Your files and other vital info gets ported over to iCloud, like your iMessages, calendar, reminders, and notes.

In addition to being an online workspace, iCloud can also store backups of your iPhone and iPad, should you ever need to restore your information to a new device. Keep in mind that doing so will probably make all, or much of, your 5GB of free storage quickly disappear.

Apps: Youll find iCloud on iOS devices, like iPhone and iPad, as well as macOS and Windows, though no Android app currently exists.

Price to upgrade: Paying $1 per month will add 50GB to your iCloud account. Apple matches Google Ones pricing with the next upgrades being 200GB and 2TB, which cost $2.99 per month and $9.99 per month, respectively. An extra 50GB in the cloud might be all that you need, but opting for 200GB or more will let you split the data among your family with iClouds Family Sharing feature.

You wont find huge amounts of storage options here, so you may want to dip into another service if you have big files to store.

By creating an account on Dropbox, youll earn 2GB of cloud storage, the lowest amount given by a major service. While the free tier, called basic, is just that in most regards, it allows you to collaborate in real time with others in Dropbox Paper, its word processor tool. Its currently limited to text documents, though users in any tier can open and edit stored documents through Microsoft Office online tools like Word and Excel for free.

Paying Dropbox for more storage will also unlock a host of features that arent available to basic users. Dropbox Plus users get 1TB of cloud storage, offline file access, and the ability to instantly back up photos and videos taken with your smartphone.

Dropbox Professional ups the capacity to 2TB, and adds several features on top of what you get with Plus. Most notably, you can recover deleted files and changes to said files for up to 120 days, Dropbox can keep your local files updated automatically via Smart Sync, and you can make a Showcase, a sort of themed portfolio for a batch of content thats neatly designed and organized.

Apps: Dropbox is available for iOS and Android, as well as on macOS and Windows. Only the Professional tier will allow Smart Sync, which automatically backs up selected folders on your computer.

Price to upgrade: Opting for 1TB of storage and more features with Dropboxs Plus tier will cost $9.99 per month. Professional adds 2TB of storage to your account for double the price.

Signing up for an individual account at Box gives you 10GB of cloud storage, which is a good start. Similar to Dropbox, Box natively allows its users to create text documents that can be edited in real time with collaborators. This cloud storage service also offers the ability to edit text as well as other types of documents with Microsofts Office tools integration, which are like Googles suite of productivity apps, but more akin to the legacy desktop apps that some are accustomed to using.

Box lacks a robust set of upgrade tiers, limiting individuals to 100GB of cloud storage at most. Theres no option in between if you only want 50GB, or beyond if you want as much as 1TB. But it tries to make up for it by being compatible with almost every device out there, even BlackBerry and Windows Phone.

Apps: Box Drive for desktop gives you access to your cloud storage and automatically updates whats stored in the cloud if you edit an item. The apps for iOS and Android allow you to make files available for offline access, and it carries over the useful in-browser ability to edit files via Microsofts free productivity apps as well as Googles.

Price to upgrade: For individual users, it costs $10 per month to upgrade to 100GB of cloud storage. Thats the only available paid tier, which is sorely lacking in both features and storage compared to the array of options presented by other services.

Here is the original post:
How to pick the cloud storage service thats right for you ...

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Originally posted here:
This VPN deal comes with free 2TB cloud storage and it's exclusive to TechRadar - TechRadar

Cloud computing is seen as a key technology in helping to future-proof the banking industry.

Banks are increasingly turning to the cloud in an effort to modernize their outdated IT models and better compete for customers' favors, finds a new report commissioned by Google even though relying on cloud providers for critical services like finance comes with its fair share of risk.

The research, which surveyed more than 1,300 leaders from the financial services industry across the globe, found that an overwhelming 83% of respondents said that their companies were deploying cloud technology as part of their primary computing infrastructures.

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In contrast, only 17% of organizations still rely primarily on on-premises services and among those, respondents said that they planned to switch on average 40% of their workloads to the public cloud during the next year.

SEE: Legacy IT: Saving money by holding onto old tech is costing us all billions

Cloud computing is seen as a key technology to future-proof the banking industry. Large-scale cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure and AWS have the capabilities to implement infrastructure that is specifically built to better protect workloads from failure, meaning better operational resiliency. The cloud is also seen as a way to support the creation of new products and services, improve data security, and better connect legacy software infrastructure.

A recent analysis by the Bank of England, in fact,estimated that adopting the ready-made services offered by hyperscalers could reduce technology infrastructure costs by up to 50%.

The top reason cited by decision makers for favoring a switch to the cloud, however, is that the technology helps companies adapt to changing customer expectations. This can be linked to the rise of disruptive fintech start-ups that were born in the cloud and are now competing against traditional financial institutions with innovative and flexible offerings for customers.

According to PwC, almost three-quarters of financial sector executivesperceive consumer banking as most likely to be disrupted by fintech.

"There are almost two tiers of banks. You have traditional banks sitting on legacy technology and then the likes of Revolut and all these other banks that are starting up, that are born in the cloud and born to be digital," Leighton James, the CTO of UKCloud, which provides multi-cloud services to public sector organizations in the UK, told ZDNet.

James argued that there is an imperative for traditional financial institutions, that are facing mounting competition from younger players, to transform digitally.

Google's latest report confirms the trend. The research found that although the vast majority of financial institutions have adopted cloud technologies in some form or other, organizations are still keeping some of their core activities on-premises. These activities, said Google, "can and will" be migrated to the cloud.

"Financial services firms should continue to maximize the potential of technology by migrating more core workloads to the cloud," said Zac Maufe, managing director at Google Cloud Financial Services, in a blog post.

In a recent press conference, top executives from the Bank of Englandseemed to align with this prediction. While, until recently, cloud services were used mostly to run applications at the periphery of banking operations such as HR systems, said the Bank of England, financial institutions are now increasingly migrating processes that are more integral to the core running of banks.

This inevitably comes with some risks. The cloud market is currently shared between less than a handful of huge tech players, with the top five providers accounting for 80% of shares. Amazon's AWS on its own holds 41% of the market, while Microsoft Azure represents nearly 20% of shares.

From a security perspective, outsourcing critical financial services to such a small set of third parties is a double-edged sword. While hyperscalers have better means to integrate resiliency in their infrastructure, for example thanks to multiple levels of redundancy, there is always a risk of failure and if every bank relies on the same providers, it could endanger the entire system.

Imagine a situation where the biggest banks in the UK are all using one cloud and there was a problem, said James: "That's a big part of our critical national infrastructure going down."

SEE: Banking is broken. This small FinTech startup plans to fix it

What's more: as with any concentrated market, there is a risk that cloud providers might start dictating their own terms, at the expense of the stability of the financial system. For example, they could refuse to be transparent by failing to open up their technologies to third-party scrutiny, meaning that it would be impossible to know if providers have baked in sufficient resiliency to carry out banking operations.

Modernizing is key, therefore, but it needs to be done cautiously, and with a reliable strategy. For James, the best way forward is to deploy multi-cloud configurations in the financial sector to balance the risk across multiple providers.

Only 17% of the financial institutions surveyed by Google have already adopted multi-cloud as an architecture of choice, while 28% rely on single cloud. According to the company, more work needs to be done from a regulatory aspect to incentivize a robust and responsible adoption of cloud among financial organizations.

"Consumers' demand for very quick transformation is becoming really overwhelming, and financial services organizations will take shortcuts to deliver on customer expectations as soon as possible," said James. "But they need to make sure it's done right the first time."

The European Union, for example, is setting up new initiatives to improve the resiliency of cloud technologies. The blocis currently implementing the GAIA-X project, a cloud marketplace that cloud providers can join if they abide by certain values, including data sovereignty, data availability, interoperability, transparency and fair participation with the end goal of mitigating reliance on US- and China-based hyperscalers.

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Banks are moving their core operations into the cloud at a rapid rate. But new tech brings new challenges - ZDNet