Like any other organisations in the business and corporate sectors, educational institutions too need to back up their data well. As such, schools and colleges are now going for cloud solutions that not only ensure safe storage of data but also allow easy access and complete maintenance of the stored data. If you are in charge of the IT department of a particular school or a school district as a whole, it is the time you rely upon cloud solution providers. However, in order to derive the benefits of online data backup, it is essential that you choose the right data storage company. Here is a list of features that you must be looking for in your potential serviceprovider before entrusting them with the responsibility of managing your critical data.
Cloud service providers usually boast of their 24/7 availability. But when there is a downtime, very few are able to overcome the crisis within the least possible time. So, when you sign the Service Level Agreement (SLA) with a data storage company, make absolutely sure that they are providing you with an uptime of at least 99.9%. The level of protection offered should be high and it should be clear in the SLA.
One of the main reasons behind going for cloud services is the increased security of the data. A reliable data storage company should essentially use advanced security technologies. Any data that is transmitted to the servers must be fully encrypted till it is accessed by the user. Also, if your school has some specific storage compliance, ensure that the service provider meets these standards.
Your storage requirements will change over the time. So, as the school’s data backup requirement changes, the cloud service provider should be able adapt to the change, be it an increase or decrease ofstorage space. Scalability of services is a must, which ensures that the user is not locked into the amount of storage space that was designated at the initial time of subscription.
Data is stored on the cloud because cloud storage ensures recovery as and when necessary. This recovery is not possible for offline data. So, when you are looking for cloud solutions, you need to be assured of a simple process of data recovery. Go with service providers that promise single action data recovery and speak to them about the data recovery processes they offer.
Last but not the least, your cloud storage companymust be using an automated process to backup and store all of the data. When the data is backed up efficiently, it is easier to recover from any device, no matter the time or place.