A Deeper Look Into The Cloud Storage Industry

7 years ago | Posted in: Technology | 1201 Views

With the advancements in the technology industry, people are looking for better ways to store their pictures, music, movies, remote video monitoring, and other information. The Online Storage industry has improved tremendously over the past couple of years and with this change, the industry has become more popular. What caused this change? Cloud Storage.

In today’s technology filled world, people often hear the phrase, “in the cloud”. The cloud storage industry has worked throughout the years to give their customers more storage so they can download more. As companies have looked into the need for increased storage, they have found that it would be more beneficial to create cloud storage than devices with more storage on them.

Major Players

About 55 percent of the industry is dominated by the top 5 cloud providers. These top 5 providers include; Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google, and Salesforce. Together these 5 providers are growing faster than the industry itself.

Salesforce is the fifth biggest user. Their platform offerings grew 40 percent year over year in the fourth quarter. Their cloud database is the backbone of App Cloud and runs more than 4 million applications for businesses.

Google, being the fourth biggest user of cloud storage, created the Google Cloud Platform. This platform consists of physical assets such as hard disks drives, computers and virtual resources that are contained in Google’s data centers across the globe.

IBM is the third biggest user. They advertise that their storage is able to compensate for all their user’s needs. They have five different storage choices their users get to choose from; object, block, file, mass, and content delivery network. Object storage allows the user to organize, store, manage, and access different types of things such as; audio, emails, images, office documents, and videos. Block storage gives user the complete control over the persistence of their storage. File storage is similar to a cloud file cabinet with more storage space for important records. Mass storage servers store everything the user needs. Content delivery network allows users to deliver content faster and more cost-effective.

Microsoft is the seconds biggest cloud storage user. OneDrive is free cloud storage that Microsoft offers all their users with  each Microsoft account. OneDrive allows users to gain access to their files from anywhere on any device. It also allows users to share documents, photos and files on any device and with friends, coworkers and family members.

The largest company that uses cloud storage is Amazon. They created Amazon S3, Amazon Simple Storage Service. This is object storage with web service interface that stores and retrieves any amount of data from multiple places on the web.

Future of The Cloud

Technology is always changing and finding new ways to improve our lives. Over the past decade, online storage has increased dramatically. It is estimated that the cloud storage industry will double within the next year or two. In 2015, the industry reached $19 billion and is estimated that by the year 2020 will grow to  nearly $65 billion. It is clear that due to this increase, more and more businesses are turning towards the cloud for their storage needs.

With more companies deciding to utilize cloud storage, it is expected that there will be more competition. Along with the five companies listed above, more and more companies are turning towards the cloud storage industry. This is sure to cause a lot more competition between companies as they compete to become the biggest cloud storage provider.

As technology has increased, users have wanted to stream and download more but have run into the issue of space. The more users want to download and stream, the more space they need. Instead of going out and buying additional hard drives, which isn’t popular for cell phones, people would rather have a computer or phone with more storage than go out and buy a hard drive with more storage on it.

Knowing this fact, companies have turned toward the cloud storage industry for help. Storing pictures, documents, videos, and data in the cloud opens up more space on the actual device. It also allows users to access information saved in the cloud on any device including computers, tablets and smartphones.

Cloud based storage makes it easier to maintain a backup of files and manage large amounts of data and allows easy accessibility to users on any network. The Cloud Storage industry has reached homes, schools, and business. With all data and personal information online, cloud storage allows companies, families and schools to be able to store more but also protect the information.

 

By:  Rick Delgado
Bio: I’ve been blessed to have a successful career and have recently taken a step back to pursue my passion of writing. I love to write about new technologies and how it can help us and our planet.

Tags: , ,

Share it.

Leave a Reply

Related Posts