The general feeling around the use of the cloud when it was first officially made public by the late Steve Jobs was that it’s more for consumers than big corporations, businesses and those tech users who are a little bit savvier than everyone else, like programmers, hackers etc. Admittedly Apple’s presentation of the cloud suggested that this online data storage platform would be used for tasks such as storing and backing up of one’s personal media, which may have bordered on the frivolous when one thinks about how many pictures or cat videos people would use the cloud to store.

Programmers and businesses on the other hand seemed a bit apprehensive about the mere suggestion of storing their sensitive data on a cloud based server, citing privacy and security reasons, despite the best efforts of the industry to convince them otherwise. This is why the likes of Microsoft created their own cloud platforms – I mean in what world would Microsoft trust their company data to the likes of Apple, even if there are legal frameworks in place to account for the implied security and privacy of those data?

On a little bit of a smaller scale, or indeed a larger scale depending on the size of your business in relation to the leading tech businesses, the question of whether to approach your data storage needs using the cloud over in-house servers cannot help but come up. Prior to the large-scale development and adoption of cloud computing and specifically cloud storage, many businesses in some or other way did use the cloud but didn’t quite know it. However, keeping in mind the considerations of data privacy and perhaps less so security, the data storage wars between the cloud and in-house servers has become a lot more serious.

Using a hybrid data storage system

It would be folly to rely solely on a cloud based system for all your data storage needs because as much as the service provider offering the facility does everything in their power to account for things like security and privacy, any threats to your data are out of your hands, completely. At the same time there are some industries whose data only really makes sense to that particular establishment, in which case using the cloud perhaps makes better sense.

Storing the same amount of data you would otherwise store in-house on the cloud definitely costs less and these end-user cloud data storage platforms are purpose-built to offer services which fall in line with typical end-user type customers, so they take all the hassle out of the process. On the other hand, in-house data storage gives you full control of everything to do with your data storage needs and there’s no additional cost associated with the bandwidth required to transfer the data over the internet.

Basically the bottom line is that your cloud versus in-house data storage war comes down to your specific needs, but a hybrid data storage system should always be used in any case. Which storage method you use more over the other is the real question which should be asked.