How Long Will Your Cloud Storage Remain Unlimited?
A few years ago, while cloud storage pricing was still relatively high, unlimited storage plans were born. Suddenly, there was the ability to store all of your data, regardless of how much there might be, without having to be concerned about running out of space at a critical time. Personal users didn’t seem to benefit from this arrangement too much, since it is businesses that have the quantity of data necessary to be able to see the true savings that can be had from unlimited plans, with their infinite storage capacities but the same low, fixed price.
After enough businesses jumped on the unlimited bandwagon however, they started reaping those savings, but the cloud storage providers started seeing their bottom line and profit margins being affected as the asking price of storage started going down. This didn’t necessarily mean that the cost of storage was going down in general, but that the plan prices were being cut to try to draw more business into a saturated market. On the dawn of what will soon be price wars, where only the strongest cloud storage companies will survive, companies are already starting to change some of those offerings that they put on the table just a couple years ago.
In a move that some people are calling the “capping of cloud storage,” cloud storage companies are starting to change their plans to accommodate the reduced value per gigabyte of data storage plans. Realizing that small and medium sized businesses have been purchasing personal unlimited plans and storing several terabytes of data on those plans while enjoying the same low prices as a personal user with a few hundred gigabytes, providers have had to rethink their plan pricing schemes to accommodate the disparity that was occurring between their customer demographics. This led way to enterprise plans that were designed to accommodate the increased storage and access needs of businesses, while maintaining a price point that would be beneficial to both the provider and the consumer.
The bigger companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple are capable of offering the lowest cost cloud storage possible due to infinite resources, funds and massive amounts of storage space contained within servers that take up entire data centers that span whole city blocks. Since they have these resources at their disposal, it is easy for them to drive the prices down and cause the profit margins of other, smaller providers to take a serious hit. In the grand scheme, it’s just a few extra dollars for these bigger companies, but those few extra dollars are enough to make or break smaller companies that offer cloud storage exclusively.
If you are paying for a plan from a smaller provider, it is important to take these things into consideration. Examine their business model, see where they are at in the sea of providers and whether or not they appear to be able to withstand the coming price wars that will cripple companies that are either not prepared or operating on a shoestring budget. Those companies that are barely staying above water will most likely sink if they do not have an infrastructure that can support the changing price schemes as they become more intensely competitive.
With companies like OpenDrive, you get the pledge that unlimited storage is truly unlimited and will never be capped. They have the infrastructure to support changing prices and have already been positioned in the market to offer the best rates for the past couple years. So you are getting an unlimited plan, whether it is for your personal or business needs, which will not be capped and is future proofed in every way possible.
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