Gmail and Google Drive experienced service disruptions globally on March 13 for appropriately four hours. Gmail users reported having trouble saving email drafts, sending emails, attaching and accessing attachments while Google Drive users experienced trouble uploading and downloading files.
Synology, leading network attached storage (NAS), IP surveillance and network equipment provider, urges businesses to face up to the hidden costs and risks in adopting public cloud services by considering getting a NAS, which is based on the private cloud architecture. NAS provides file sync services, collaboration suite, corporate communication application, mail services and high availability services simultaneously, helping businesses minimize the risks and losses caused by public cloud services anomalies.
The Philippines remains to be one of the countries in the Asia Pacific yet to mature in terms of cloud adoption, according to the Cloud Readiness Index 2018 presented by the Asia Cloud Computing Association. This is despite conglomerates and medium-sized companies relying on the cloud for as much as 80 percent and 40 percent of their workload, respectively. About 30 percent of small enterprises use some form of cloud. Although more businesses, including SMEs, are willing to consider moving to the cloud, connectivity issues hinder such companies from actually expensive making the shift, especially with the Philippines still having the slowest internet in the APAC region according to Global digital agency ‘We Are Social’ and Hootsuite.
An industry that could benefit highly from cloud technologies is the BPO sector, one of the biggest industries the Philippines with 1.4 million relatively well-paid workers and generating 9 percent of the country’s GDP. Improvements in cloud computing efficiency will keep the industry competitive.
Synology Product Manager Chad Chiang noted that the threshold of deploying public cloud services is lower than that of a private cloud’s, but the losses caused by service disruptions resulting from public cloud anomalies will be considerable. In this case, businesses are strongly advised to establish a private cloud system in order to ensure maximum service uptime and master data autonomy.
For companies that already use public cloud services, Synology also offers Active Backup for Office 365 and Active Backup for G Suite to protect Office 365 and G Suite data, minimizing the risk and losses caused by public cloud anomalies.
Synology Product Marketing Manager Jenn Yeh pointed out that relying solely on public cloud is not a good idea. It is just like putting all eggs in one basket. The best practice is to back up data on the public cloud to a local NAS in order to protect valuable data such as mails, contacts, calendar and cloud drive. This approach enables businesses to obtain the latest data and provide uninterrupted services to customers should there be an abnormality in the public cloud. It also equips businesses with tools to prevent employees from accidentally or maliciously deleting data and saving data for audits.
Backing up SaaS data is a must. New technologies come with new risks, but there is no excuse for being unprepared. Better to be prepared so that when disaster strikes, businesses can ride out the storm unscathed.
