Master's
Degree Student Afanasenko Anna
Southern Federal
University, Russia
Popular
Cloud Storages. Overview and Comparison
Today, the majority of Internet technologies users has already dealt
with cloud storage data and evaluated their advantages and disadvantages. Such
storage allows, firstly, to remotely store large amounts of information without
the need for any of your own resources, and, secondly, to have access to stored
information from anywhere. As cloud technologies penetrate into people's lives,
no one in the corporate environments takes this technology as an innovation.
There is worldwide reduction of concerns about cloud environments: according to
Information Week's analysts, back in 2012 no less than 45% of consumers of such
services were concerned about these issues. And in this respect, Russia is no
exception - in 2012-2013, lots of private cloud projects, as well as hosts of
major providers came into existence - both Russian and foreign[1].
Analyst reports suggest that cloud services are
one of the most dynamic sectors of the IT market. This includes user services
for data storage and enterprise cloud services. According to IDC (International
Data Corporation), cloud services will grow much faster than the entire IT
market in services, and by the end of 2016 the global market in clouds will
exceed $460 billion, showing a CAGR (Compound annual growth rate) of 50.8%. At
the same time, according to Forrester Research, the growth rate of the global
IT market will be about 8%. Thus, the progress of world IT industry in the
direction of clouds is obvious [2, 3].
While experts speculate that Cloud computing may be the most popular
technology of the next decade, large technology companies make money by
developing cloud services. Over the past 4 years, dozens of custom cloud
services that offer all sorts of perks, whether increased disk space,
availability of data encryption or client applications for mobile devices,
appeared in the market. Nowadays a group of leaders has been formed on the
market: Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Yandex dictate their terms. The
purpose of this work is to review the most popular cloud data storage and to
analyze their advantages and disadvantages.
Google Drive
Google offers a service to everybody who wishes to use Google Drive,
which is designed in accordance with the ideology of the platform Android.
However, this does not mean that it is not suitable for other systems and
devices.
Google Drive differs from others in concise
interface and user-friendly software. It offers a set of convenient client
applications for smartphones and tablets based on the operating system Android,
for PCs and laptops running Windows or Mac OS, for mobile devices iPhone and
iPad. In the future, it's going to make closer integration with the storage
operating system Chrome OS and be available for Linux too.Each user gets up to
15GB of free space in Google Drive on all the Google services (including Gmail
and Photos). In doing so the user can decide how much space to allocate for the
email and how much to leave for his/her own files.
Paid tariff plans start from $2.49 for 25GB up
to $800 for 16TB per month. Among functional features worth to mention is the
integration with the service Google Docs, and Gmail, and the social network
Google+. Google Drive also includes an option for backup - by default it saves
all changes made in the last 30 days. Web management interface of cloud storage
is quite convenient and functional.
Work with files in Google Drive can be done
directly in the browser. Google Docs allows people to create and edit standard
documents, spreadsheets and presentations, as well as to work on them together
in real time frameworks.
Google Drive can be transformed into a separate
folder in the documents of the smartphone, tablet or PC, and its contents will
be synchronized automatically.
The drawback is the license agreement for the
transfer of all user content to Google and its partners [4].
Dropbox
This Service, with an audience of 100 million
users, can be safely attributed to the pioneers of cloud storage data. This is
the most popular service, which is familiar to almost everybody who has ever
been interested in the topic of "clouds". After registration Dropbox
is integrated into the operating system, creating a folder with the same name.
Thus, any file is uploaded to the cloud server just by placing it in the
folder. By the amount of free disk space Dropbox loses to many services- only
2GB, but due to the referral program you can invite users to increase the
amount of virtual space on cloud up to 18GB (500MB for each). Account Cost Pro
100GB will cost $9.99 per month, 200GB - $19.99 and 500GB - $49.99. The
important point is the ability to create a public link that will be available
to all users, regardless of whether they are customers of Dropbox or not. One
major advantage of Dropbox is the ease and intuitiveness to use - you just need
to upload files to the folder Dropbox, Share it if you want, or sync to another
device. Unlike major competitors, edited files are not copied to the server
completely - only the modified part is transmitted after being compressed. It
is believed that exactly this fact explains the well-known efficiency of work
with Dropbox, compared to others.
At the same time, many users complain about the
speed of uploading files to the server, as well as long waiting time for the
end of synchronization, which can be tens of minutes. Security service is a
weak point also. The system does not use encryption on the client side, so it
is not sufficiently protected from intruders [5].
Microsoft
OneDrive
Solution from Microsoft - Microsoft OneDrive also allows you to
synchronize information on various devices and provides online access to all
files through a browser or a special application. The storage system is tightly
integrated with Windows 8, as well as mail service Hotmail (or outlook.com).
This allows users to store data files, images and other information in
Microsoft OneDrive directly from the email application. Subscribers receive a
free service of 7GB storage. In addition to Windows service, the system prompts
you to install the storage client modules on platforms Android, iOS, Windows
Phone, Mac OS X, as well as not so popular in Russia MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan. In
the settings you can customize the storage file parameters to Office -
Microsoft XML standard or open format Open Document. This is convenient for
those who use computers with different systems, not all of which support the
Microsoft format. It is also possible to remotely download files from any PC,
associated to the account of the user. For example, through a smartphone with
Windows Phone 8 a user despite his location can download a file from his
personal computer which should be switched on. Additional function of OneDrive
is work with photo archives. Images that are saved by the user are displayed as
thumbnails or slideshows. Friends can view and comment on them. Also you can
publish photos to Facebook. If the user wants to upload a file to the
repository, he will come across the restriction to upload a single file up to 2
GB. Another drawback is that a mobile client can upload photos and videos only,
not documents. Besides, OneDrive doesn't work with Linux systems [6].
An interesting
variant of cloud storage, offered by the company Apple is Apple iCloud. When a
user tries to log in iCloud.com he/she is faced with the necessity to provide
Apple ID. It can be obtained by registering at the store iTunes. Besides, all
users of Apple equipment - iPad, iPhone or Mac already have an ID. iCloud is
primarily intended for the users of Apple devices. In other cases, system
resources should be handled through the browser. This system provides free
space for keeping notes, letters, photographs, calendars, and other
"attributes of life" of a modern man. But for work with documents
it's necessary to purchase a subscription to the iWork application. However,
Apple iCloud is more intended for mobile devices and, for example, doesn't
allow to download other file types not supported by it.
Apple iCloud
offers to start with 5GB as the majority of cloud systems, but is not designed
for storing unstructured abstract data. In this space you can place books,
music, videos, etc. purchased from the iTunes Store. Also while you take a
photo, it can automatically be sent to all your iOS devices with the Photo
Stream option that turns this cloud storage into an automated media backup
server. However, it’s not only for “media-”. The synchronization of contacts,
messages in the mailbox, coordinates of the current location of your iPhone /
iPad and other data is also done automatically. iCloud works on Mac with the operating system Lion, as well as on
mobile terminals running iOS 5 or later version, and at the same time on
computers with Windows, having the latest version of iTunes[7].
Yandex.Disk
Yandex.Disk is an
analog of Google repository. Yandex Cloud service joined the market relatively
recently, but it already has a strong position among the Russian-speaking
Internet audience. In particular, the popularity among users was conquered by
the generous distribution of a disk space. With the free account, a user can
get 10GB in total. But initially, a user has only 3GB and could get additional
7GB for several promo actions. Yandex disk is available for Windows, Mac OS,
Android and iOS. It's also praised for its speed, which is important in the
data transmission. It should be noted that Yandex.Disk is not a separate
service provided only for Yandex.Mail customers. Yandex.Disk allows to view
common file formats, listen to music and play video, and synchronize files
between all the devices of the user.
Moreover, it has
the same function as iCloud - opportunity to automatically download photos,
videos and media to Yandex.Disk from digital cameras or other external
storages. In this case a user is
provided by additional 32 GB of space for six months. An additional feature of
Yandex.Disk is the possibility to setup the access rights of other users to
edit files and folders.
Comparison of cloud storages
|
Service |
Google Drive |
OneDrive |
Yandex.Disk |
iCloud |
DropBox |
|
Free space, GB |
15 |
7 |
3-10 |
5 |
2-18 |
|
Maximum space, TB |
16 |
1 |
1 |
0.05 |
0.5 |
|
Subscription(start price) |
$10 per month for 100 GB |
$25 per year for 50
GB |
$1per month
for 10 GB |
$20 per year for 10 GB |
$10 per month for 100 GB |
|
Maximum size of a file, GB |
10 |
n/a |
2 |
10 |
10 |
|
Media Streaming |
No |
No |
yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Direct download link |
Yes |
No |
yes |
No |
Yes |
|
PC OS |
Windows, Mac OS |
Windows, Mac OS |
Windows, Mac OS, Linux |
Mac OS |
Windows, Mac OS, Linux |
|
Mobile OS |
Android, iOS |
Android, iOS, Windows Phone |
Android, iOS, Windows Phone |
iOS |
Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Symbian, Bada |
Thus, anyone,
even a picky user can find the most suitable option for himself/herself. Often,
the choice is based on the already used service (Google, Yandex, Apple,
Microsoft, or cross-platform Dropbox), the required volume (paid/free) and
those additional functions that are the most interesting to each of us
personally.
The analysis of
the most popular cloud storage services and the discussion of their advantages
and disadvantages, done in this work, introduces the existing options and could
help make the right decision while choosing your own cloud system.
References
1. http://www.cnews.ru/reviews/new/oblachnye_servisy_2013/articles/oblachnye_tehnologii_vse_eshche_v_ozhidanii_vzryvnogo_rosta.html ,2013
2. http://idcrussia.com/ru/events/50967-idc-cloud-leadership-forum-2013.html ,2013
3. “Collaboration Services: Deployment Options For The
Enterprise”,
Forrester Consulting , 2013
4. http://digit.ru/technology/20130731/403909541.html Digit overview, Andrey Shuklin , 2013
5. http://siliconrus.com/ Alexandr Lashkov , 2014
6. http://www.gazeta.ru/tech/2013/06/19_a_5386833.shtml Maxim Belous,2013
7. http://www.apple.com/ru/icloud/features/#photo-stream.html ,2014