For the past several years, companies have been making use of cloud computing solutions. Cloud solutions offer agility and scalability that are often hard to duplicate in-house, and they offer a way for companies to meet specific business functions without large capital investments. Cloud-based storage is one of the areas that has seen relatively little activity in the business world, while it’s taken serious hold in the consumer marketplace.

The success of companies like Dropbox in providing cloud-based storage solutions, however, has more and more businesses asking whether such solutions make sense for them.

Here are some factors to consider when thinking about utilizing cloud storage for your company:

• The basic assumption of cloud storage is that you don’t need to house data internally. What cloud storage does for you is eliminate the cost of purchasing and maintaining storage systems for your company. You don’t have to worry about redundancy or security, and you don’t have to be concerned with backups. While some details will vary based on the cloud storage provider, this is the basic consideration.
• Bandwidth should be a concern. Depending on the size of your organization, bandwidth can be a concern. If the bulk of your data is being stored out on the Internet, you need to have a big enough pipeline to handle that. In addition, you need to worry about redundancy and connectivity; when your Internet connection fails, your company has no access to its files. Costs of a bigger data circuit, then, must be factored into the overall equation.
• Fast, reliable storage is relatively cheap. You can purchase multiple terabytes of storage capacity to support your business relatively cheap. If you want that kind of capacity from a cloud storage provider, you’re not going to have the upfront costs but you’ll be paying a significant amount each month.
• Security should be a concern. To be sure, cloud storage providers, for the most part, offer world-class security that most small or medium sized businesses can’t replicate in house. Part of the process, however, of moving to a cloud storage provider is reviewing these security measures.