Cloud Managed Backup Vs Backup Tapes

Both Cloud Managed Backup and Backup tapes are both used within businesses to backup critical data. However, they both have their advantages and disadvantages, but which one is the most reliable backup?

Tape backups

Tape backups have been the main choose of data backup for decades before any alternative backup solutions was available, but the question is are backup tapes still as efficient and reliable as Cloud Managed Backup? On average it costs 3p per GB to save data. This can be a very affordable way for businesses – especially if its data is constantly growing. Having a physical backup tape that is stored offline ensures your data is never weak to a cyber-attack, a cheap alternative that provides a high level of security.

On the other hand, although the tapes are cheap for data to be stored on, the implementing of the infrastructure, the software, hardware, tape drives and tape libraries, upkeep and maintenance can become very costly. There will need to be the storage space required to keep this infrastructure.

Like any physical device there is always the possibility that a natural disaster could destroy the device – losing the data, whether it’s a fire, theft or flood.  This could destroy the tapes completely losing all the data stored and possibly not providing businesses continuity if the needed files are all destroyed.

Cloud Managed Backup

Cloud Managed Backup is becoming essential to many businesses as it provides quick access to all files in the event of a crisis. All that is required is an internet connection. In addition, Cloud Managed Backup can provide businesses data to multiple authorised users or locations with an internet connection, allowing easy access to your files while on meetings, conferences and seminars. This enables a quick and easy way to ensure all your data is available at any point. Despite all data being accessible through the internet and online we ensure that there is a military grade level of security encryption on the cloud platform to ensure the highest security available.

Using the Cloud is incredibly cost efficient for businesses as on average it costs £1.65 a day which is less than buying a cup of coffee – and unlike alternative data backups, there are no extra costs to keep your backup available. This allows you to budget your monthly IT expenses. All businesses grow over time including their business data, therefore more storage can be provided easily, and ensuring businesses only pay for what data is used.

By moving to the Cloud all data is kept on an online platform meaning if a natural disaster was to happen to any device (desktops, laptops etc.) a Cloud backup would not be affected from this, therefore all data can be recovered instantly.

However, there are a few disadvantages to using Cloud Managed Backup – mainly that in order to be able to access all data from the cloud it requires an internet connection to the cloud platform. Backups and restores are also quicker when having a fast internet connection – slow connection speeds will slow these processes down.

Overall, Cloud Managed Backup is a more of an efficient data backup solution compared to tape backup. We found Cloud Managed Backup offers a cost-efficient way to store Data while ensuring there’s a fixed monthly charge, unlike backup tapes where even though the storage tapes are a low cost the infrastructure and maintenance becomes expensive. But to most businesses the most important thing is reliability of the backup to ensure business continuity. Therefore Cloud Managed backup can provide all stored data at any point it’s required as long as an internet connection is available, whereas the Backup tapes do not require an internet connection but each tape has to be stored and sorted through when loss of data making it a time and costly process.

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