By Jennifer Marsh
Jennifer Marsh is a software developer, programmer and technology writer and occasionally blogs for Rackspace Hosting.
Ever lost data and wished there was a backup available? Backups save companies time and money, especially when the data is an integral part of revenue and customer support. Internal backup systems are expensive, but cloud backups eliminate much of the cost, time and storage space needed to keep archives of data. Good cloud hosts offer cost-saving opportunities for companies looking for a backup solution.
Backup De-Duping
Even some seasoned IT professionals haven’t heard of a process called de-duping. De-duping checks the physical blocks on a hard drive and identifies whether the system has “seen” the block of data before. If the system has seen the data before, it skips that particular part of the backup and moves to the next data block. This means that backup data is only stored once, but file servers and company data is still backed up and storage space is more efficiently allocated. Less storage space means cost-savings, too.
Multiple Servers Instead of One
Cloud backups use data centers, which incorporate multiple servers that act as one storage location. This speeds up the process and saves the company money on data usage. Most companies pay for the data used at the ISP level. Cloud services let the company back up directly from the external web host to the cloud, which means the backups perform faster and across multiple servers for a more cost efficient storage management setup.
Cloud backups also eliminate the “not enough storage” notification. With cloud backups, the storage capacity is unlimited to the customer because the host takes care of server upgrades and costs. The costs are recuperated by charging customers for only the cloud storage used rather than piece-by-piece for each hard drive used.
Set Retention Dates
Does the company really need that two year old data backup? Some backup software lets you set a retention date, which limits the amount of space used and saves time, because the administrator does not need to go back and delete old archives.  Some software lets the administrator set a date and automatically deletes old archives. Archives can be saved for a couple of months and safely removed if the administrator creates full backups regularly.
These few cloud advantages can save the company costs in IT technology and backup storage space rather than hosting backups internally, which costs thousands of dollars and man-hours. With cloud hosting, all of these costs and the work needed to build it are taken care of.