Cloud computing has become a hot topic these days with over 103 million occurrences of the term in Google Search. Many businesses are fascinated to migrate their data to the cloud. What could be the reason behind cloud computing’s growing popularity? Why are so many organizations choosing to host their data on the cloud instead of physical servers?
Why are so many businesses moving to the Cloud? What’s the buzz all about?
Cloud is an on-demand delivery of the content over the Internet. With the cloud, businesses do not have to set up large data centers, servers, or deploy a large workforce to maintain them. This saves huge server and administration costs. Businesses only need to pay for the data they use. For instance, major cloud storage service provider Microsoft OneDrive for Business offers limited storage of 50 GB with a plan charging as little as $1.99 every month. Organizations that need to expand their existing storage limits can opt for Business Plan 1 that offers a whopping 1 TB of storage charged annually at $60 per user. Even more, Business Plan 2 offers 5 TB of storage quota charged annually at $120 per user. It is also possible to downgrade the plans as and when required. This is why cloud computing is so popular these days and people are moving from the traditional data storage methods to the cloud.
Forget not, cloud technology is much more than a typical data storage. It offers tremendous other benefits for businesses.
Let us take an example of a call center organization that may have a large set of computers (possibly, several hundred). All of these computers require regular maintenance and up-gradation of the installed software. The applications come with inherent limitations. These applications may require a specific set of hardware to function. As technology advances, the organization may need to spend a huge amount of money to upgrade the host computer’s hardware for these applications to run smoothly. Furthermore, the organization incurs additional expenditure to hire IT support engineers to deal with technical issues that might arise in the course of time.
Cloud technology offers an incredible solution in this scenario. With the cloud, your organization does not have to install applications on hundreds of different host computers. Your employees can access the applications stored on servers located in a remote part of the world, straight from their office, or even home! The servers hosting those applications are powerful enough to handle huge data, provide seamless user experience, and deliver faster performance. All you need is an active Internet connection for each of your computers.
Companies like Microsoft already offer a full-fledged version of Microsoft Office (called Office Online) that can create and edit Office documents, spreadsheets, notes, presentations without having the user to install it on their PC. Many small developers are starting to release cloud-based versions of their software that work amazingly straight from your browser. This saves you from the crucial cost of hardware up-gradation, maintenance, IT support, and at the same time, adds up to the organizational efficiency.
In addition to this, cloud technology offers businesses the ability to automatically synchronize their data on multiple devices at once. There is absolutely no need for transferring data from one employee’s desk to another. The cloud app will automatically sync data as and when you update it. There is also no need to carry physical storage drives like an external hard disk or USB drives. This is pretty much beneficial if some of your employees are working from home.
Furthermore, some cloud solutions offer regular data backups. Cloud storage offers the highest level of data encryption for encoding and protecting your information from hackers and unauthorized people.
Why You Must Scan Your Local Data for Duplicates Before Moving to the Cloud?
Before you decide to migrate your organization’s data on to the cloud, it is important to eliminate redundancy. This will save you a lot of time and Internet bandwidth.
When the computers in an organization accumulate too many duplicate files, there is a possibility of file mismatch. Let’s say, an employee updates a worksheet, and saves it. Another employee tries to find the same worksheet and ends up mistakenly opening an outdated (identical) copy. They spend the same amount of time, and enter in the new data that the previous employee has already added! This badly affects the business efficiency. You can avoid these issues by regularly scanning your local and cloud storage for duplicates.
Duplicate files are of any kind- documents, images, music, videos, compressed zip files, etc. There is no rule of thumb that duplicate files will always have identical names. They may or may not have identical names, depending upon the circumstances in which they were created. For instance, copying a bulk of files from one location to another should add a postfix (such as – Copy(1), – Copy (2)), if files with the same name already exist. The same is possible when you download the same file again and again from the Internet.
Remember that files with the same name need not always be duplicates. Some files may share the same name yet they may have altogether different content. This is why it is not recommended to blindly delete files just because they have similar names. There is a chance that you may lose important data that is not duplicate at all. The only way to confirm that the files are duplicates is to compare the actual file content. This is easy if you have a limited set of data, but for businesses and organizations, the data may be so huge in size that the entire task can be nearly impossible.
Worry not, with the advancement of the technology, it is quite easy and fun to compare hundreds of thousands of files in a short span of a few minutes. Clone Files Checker, an algorithm-based computer software, does this job pretty well with the highest level of accuracy that is possible.
Clone Files Checker works in these stages:
- The user selects folders that contain possible duplicates.
- The user specifies what kind of files to be searched for in the duplicate scan. This includes documents, music, videos, compressed archives. Alternatively, the user can choose the All Files option that scans every file type, irrespective of its format.
- The user now reviews which files to keep, and which ones to ignore. This is done either manually using the checkboxes, or even better, using automatic selection patterns that are available in the application. An in-house preview functionality is also available to help the user view thumbnails for any images that might have been detected.
- Now that the files are selected, the user selects an action- moves all selected files to an entirely different folder, or permanently deletes these files.
- If the user has chosen to back up their files before deleting, they can restore them later at any time with just a few clicks.
Regularly cleaning data for duplicates has several benefits:
- Keeps your data organized and clean
- Makes room for new files that you really need
- Improves business efficiency. Organizational data is just a click away when you need it
- Easily search for the right file without wasting much time
- Avoids redundancy and prevents mismatch
- Saves your precious time
Regularly Cleaning Up Duplicates on the Cloud
Clone Files Checker for Mac comes with a complimentary subscription of Cloud Duplicate Finder. CFC Windows users can also register for Cloud Duplicate Finder and make good use of the cloud duplicate cleanup possibilities it provides. CDF is a browser-based duplicate finder that finds duplicates stored on your cloud accounts. CFC is available for both Microsoft Windows and Mac.
You can use your free subscription of Cloud Duplicate Finder to eliminate duplicate documents and other files on your cloud account: In addition to all benefits covered under cleaning local storage section, it offers the following added benefits:
- Economical: No need to pay additional charges to your cloud company for additional storage. By cleaning duplicates, you’re recovering a considerable amount of storage space occupied by unwanted junk.
- Share & Collaborate Large Files Without Hassle: Recovering lost storage occupied by duplicate junks, will make it easier to share large files without hassle. No more worries about low storage problems.
- Fully Online: The entire duplicate cleaning process is done online. No need to download any data or re-upload it.
- Privacy-friendly: Cloud Duplicate Finder uses the official APIs from the respective cloud service providing companies. As such, you don’t have to worry about the privacy of your cloud data.
- Saves Bandwidth: Eliminating duplicates will not only save your storage but also save up on Internet bandwidth.
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Raza Ali Kazmi works as an editor and technology content writer at Sorcim Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. He loves to pen down articles on a wide array of technology related topics and has also been diligently testing software solutions on Windows & Mac platforms. If you have any question about the content, you can message me or the company's support team.