Cloud storage is a service model where digital data is stored on remote servers managed by a third-party provider and accessed over the internet. This approach eliminates the need for businesses to purchase and manage their own physical storage infrastructure. Instead, they can leverage on-demand, scalable capacity from a provider, often paying only for the resources they consume.
Adopting cloud storage offers significant advantages over traditional on-premises solutions. It allows businesses to streamline operations, reduce overhead, and enhance their data management capabilities, moving from a capital-intensive model to a flexible, operational one.
Cloud storage isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. It's typically offered in several deployment models, each catering to different needs for control, security, and scalability. Organizations can choose the model that best aligns with their operational requirements and data governance policies.
While often used interchangeably, cloud storage and cloud computing serve distinct but related functions in a modern IT strategy.
While cloud providers offer robust security, organizations must address key considerations to protect their data.
The cloud storage market is dominated by three hyperscalers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. These providers lead the industry with vast global infrastructure and a wide range of services. They offer scalable solutions for nearly any use case, from enterprise data lakes to simple backups.
Beyond the big three, other vendors serve specific niches. Services like Dropbox and Box are popular for file synchronization and sharing. Meanwhile, traditional enterprise vendors like IBM and Dell EMC also offer robust cloud solutions.
How secure is my data in the cloud?
Leading providers use robust security like end-to-end encryption and compliance with major regulations. However, security is a shared responsibility; you must still properly configure access controls and manage user permissions to prevent breaches.
What happens if my cloud provider has an outage?
Most providers guarantee high uptime through service-level agreements (SLAs) and have built-in redundancy across multiple data centers. This ensures your data remains accessible and minimizes disruption to your operations during an outage.
Can I switch cloud providers easily?
Migrating between providers can be challenging due to data egress fees, technical complexities, and potential downtime. Planning a multi-cloud or hybrid strategy from the outset can help mitigate vendor lock-in and simplify future transitions.
Contract management is the process of creating, executing, and analyzing contracts to maximize performance and minimize financial risk.
Learn about sales bundle, including benefits of sales bundles, crafting effective sales bundles, & sales bundle strategies explained.
Learn about video prospecting, including benefits of video prospecting, crafting compelling video messages, & comparing video prospecting and email outreach.
A draw on commission is an advance payment a salesperson receives against future earnings, which is later repaid from earned commissions.
Learn about sales prospecting, including strategies for effective sales prospecting, key tools for sales prospecting, comparing sales prospecting and lead g.
Learn about voice search optimization, including how to implement voice search optimization, & benefits of voice search optimization.
Learn about psychographics in marketing, including understanding it, crafting psychographic profiles, & psychographics vs. demographics.
Learn about bad leads, including identifying bad leads, warning signs of bad leads, impact of bad leads on sales, & strategies to minimize bad leads.
Learn about target buying stage, including identifying your target buying stage, & key metrics for buying stage analysis.
Lead scraping is the process of automatically extracting contact information and other relevant data about potential customers from online sources.
Learn about product champion, including identifying potential product champions, & cultivating a product champion mindset.
DevOps is a culture and set of practices that merges software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten development cycles.
Learn about text message marketing, including its definition, key benefits, strategies, best practices, compliance tips, and examples of successful campaigns.
Learn about trade shows, including maximizing your trade show impact, & trade show vs. virtual expos: understanding the difference.
Learn about segmentation analysis, including understanding the benefits, steps to conduct segmentation analysis, & types of segmentation methods.
Learn about vertical market, including identifying your vertical market, advantages of targeting vertical markets, & vertical vs. horizontal markets.
An on-premise CRM is a system hosted on a company's own servers, offering complete control over data, security, and system maintenance.
MOFU, or Middle of the Funnel, is the crucial evaluation stage in the buyer's journey where leads compare solutions to their known problem.
Learn about yield management, including benefits of implementing yield management, & essential components of yield management.
Data security protects digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle.
Learn about break-even, including calculating your break-even point, importance of break-even analysis, & break-even analysis vs. profit margins.
Learn about sales and marketing analytics, including key benefits of sales and marketing analytics, & implementing analytics successfully.
Lead scoring models rank prospects by assigning points for their behaviors and demographics, helping sales teams prioritize their outreach.
Data-driven lead generation is the process of using data insights to identify, attract, and convert high-quality leads into customers.
Load balancing is the practice of distributing incoming network traffic across a group of backend servers, ensuring no single server is overworked.
Database management is the process of organizing, storing, and maintaining data in a database to ensure its accuracy, security, and availability.
Learn about triggered email, including crafting effective triggered emails, benefits of triggered email marketing, & triggered emails vs. traditional campaigns.
Learn about warm outreach, including strategies for effective warm outreach, key benefits of warm outreach, & warm outreach vs. cold outreach.
Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) is the ideal order quantity a company should purchase to minimize its total inventory-related costs.
Cross-selling is a sales tactic of encouraging customers to purchase products or services that are related to what they're already buying.
The FAB technique is a sales framework connecting product features to advantages and then to the specific benefits for the customer.
Dark social is the sharing of content through private channels like messaging apps or email. This traffic is hard to track as it lacks referral data.
Learn about pain point, including identifying pain points in sales, strategies to alleviate customer pain points, & pain points vs. customer needs.
Learn about persona-based marketing, including crafting your ideal customer persona, & the impact of persona-based marketing.
Learn about point of contact, including identifying your point of contact, effective communication strategies, roles and responsibilities of a point of c.
Escalations are the process of moving a customer issue or sales opportunity to a more senior or specialized team member for resolution.
Learn about sales prospecting software, including benefits of sales prospecting software, & choosing the right sales prospecting tool.
Learn about statement of work, including key components of a statement of work, & crafting an effective statement of work.
Learn about sales plan template, including crafting an effective sales plan, key components of a sales plan, sales plan vs. marketing strategy.
CCPA compliance is adhering to the California Consumer Privacy Act, a law that grants consumers more control over their personal data.
Account Click-Through Rate (CTR) is the percentage of individuals from a target account who click on a link in an ad, email, or on a webpage.
Learn about sales partnerships, including building effective sales partnerships, types of sales partnership models, benefits of cultivating sales partnership.
Learn about request for proposal, including crafting a winning RFP, key elements of an effective RFP, & RFP vs. RFQ.
Learn about sales metrics, including key types of sales metrics, essential components of sales metrics, & analyzing sales metrics effectively.
Learn about unique selling point, including identifying your unique selling point, crafting a compelling USP, & unique selling point vs. value proposition.
Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and interest in your products to build a pipeline of qualified leads for your sales team.
“Always Be Closing” (ABC) is a sales mantra meaning every action a salesperson takes should be with the ultimate goal of closing the sale.
Learn about remote sales, including challenges of remote sales, strategies for effective remote sales, & remote sales vs. traditional sales.
Objection handling is the process of responding to a prospect's concerns or hesitations about a product or service to move a deal forward.
Account-Based Selling is a B2B strategy where sales and marketing treat high-value accounts as markets of one, using personalized outreach.
Learn about site retargeting, including how site retargeting works, benefits of site retargeting, & site retargeting strategies.
No Forms is a method for capturing lead data directly from your website visitors' profiles without requiring them to fill out any forms.
Learn about signaling, including key principles of effective signaling, understanding signaling in sales contexts, strategies for improving your signaling t.
A Champion/Challenger test pits a new 'challenger' against the current best-performing 'champion' to see which one performs better.
Deal flow refers to the stream of business proposals and investment opportunities that a company or investor receives.
Average Revenue per Account (ARPA) is the average revenue generated from each customer account, usually measured on a monthly or annual basis.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other and exchange information.
Event marketing is a strategy where brands engage directly with target audiences through live events like trade shows, conferences, or webinars.
Learn about tokenization, including how tokenization works, benefits of tokenization, types of tokenization, & tokenization best practices.
An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a detailed description of the perfect, hypothetical company that would get the most value from your product.
A Marketing Qualified Account (MQA) is a target company that has shown significant engagement, indicating it's ready for the sales team to pursue.
A freemium model offers a product's basic features for free, enticing users to upgrade to a paid version for more advanced capabilities.
Learn about qualified lead, including identifying qualified leads, criteria for lead qualification, & qualified vs. unqualified leads.
Channel partners are third-party firms that help market and sell a company's products or services, acting as an indirect sales force.
Learn about sales engineer, including roles and responsibilities of a sales engineer, & becoming a successful sales engineer.
CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) software is a sales tool for creating accurate, configurable quotes for complex products and services.
Learn about bottom of the funnel, including maximizing conversions at the funnel's end, & strategies for nurturing bottom-funnel leads.
Learn about process builder, including how process builder works, benefits of using process builder, & best practices for process builder.
Market intelligence is the process of collecting and analyzing data about your target market, competitors, and industry to guide business strategy.
Learn about serviceable available market, including calculating your serviceable available market, & key factors influencing serviceable available market.
Learn about B2B, including what is it, its key elements, the benefits of B2B partnerships, the differences between B2B and B2C, and strategies for effective marketing.
Inside sales metrics are quantifiable measures used to track the performance, activities, and effectiveness of an internal sales team.
Learn about video selling, including benefits of video selling, effective video selling strategies, & video selling vs. traditional selling.
Learn about predictive customer lifetime value, including benefits of predictive CLV, & calculating predictive CLV: a step-by-step guide.
Contact data is the set of details, like names, emails, and phone numbers, used to get in touch with a person or business for outreach.
Learn about sales and marketing alignment, including benefits of aligning sales and marketing, & steps to achieve sales and marketing harmony.
Learn about product-led growth, including hallmarks of product-led growth, strategies for implementing PLG, & comparing PLG with sales-led approaches.
Learn about page views, including understanding page views/, measuring page views effectively/, & importance of tracking page views/.
Learn about social selling, including benefits of social selling, steps to implement social selling, & social selling vs. traditional selling.
Kanban is a visual project management method that uses a board to visualize workflow, limit work-in-progress, and maximize team efficiency.
Learn about proof of concept, including steps to execute a proof of concept, & benefits of conducting a proof of concept.
Clustering is the technique of grouping similar items. In sales, it means segmenting leads by shared traits to better personalize outreach.
A Marketing Qualified Opportunity (MQO) is a lead vetted by marketing as a genuine sales opportunity, ready for direct sales follow-up.
Learn about single page applications, including benefits of single page applications, key features of SPAs, how to build SPAs, & common mistakes in SPAs.
Lead response time is the duration between a potential customer showing interest and your team's first point of contact with them.
Learn about territory management, including strategies for effective territory management, & best practices in territory management.
Conversational intelligence (CI) is AI technology that analyzes customer conversations to find insights that help sales and support teams improve.
Learn about revenue forecasting, including key elements of revenue forecasting, & steps to accurate revenue forecasting.
Day Sales Outstanding (DSO) is a financial ratio that shows the average number of days it takes for a company to receive payment for a sale.
Direct-to-consumer (D2C) is a sales strategy where a brand sells its products directly to end customers, bypassing any third-party retailers.
Lead nurturing is the process of developing and reinforcing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel.
Latency is the delay between a user's action and a system's response. It's the time it takes for a data packet to travel to its destination.
Email deliverability is the ability for your emails to successfully land in your recipients' inboxes instead of their spam folders.
Learn about business development representative, including skills and qualifications for BDRs, & roles and responsibilities of a BDR.
Customer data analysis is the process of examining customer information to uncover insights that drive business decisions and improve experiences.
Learn about real-time data, including benefits of real-time data, implementing real-time data strategies, & real-time data vs. batch processing.
Learn about brag book, including crafting your outstanding brag book, essential components of a brag book, & brag book vs. resume: unveiling the differences.
A hard sell is an aggressive sales technique that uses high-pressure tactics to push a customer into making an immediate purchase decision.
The 80/20 rule, or Pareto Principle, posits that 80% of results come from just 20% of the effort. It's a key concept for prioritization.
Learn about SOAP API, including benefits of SOAP API, how SOAP API works, SOAP API vs. REST API, and common use cases for SOAP API.