Starting a New Business Series – Part 9
Hello fellow entrepreneurs!
Last week I wrote about choosing the right office printer for your business. This week I’d like to talk about storage. No, not closet storage, or storage for all your fancy shoes and outfits, or that thing on your patio where you store your garden hose. I’m talking about data storage. You know, the mythical place where all your company documents (and your grocery list) live.
As a business owner starting out on your own, you may simply keep all your files on your computer and do some backups (we’ll talk about those next week). As your business grows and you start hiring people, how do you share files? In my years as an IT person and consultant, I have seen one common way of solving this problem…email. People simply email files back and forth to each other. While this may work for a time, I can assure you that using a mail server as a storage device is a bad idea for many reasons! So what’s a better way to share files in your company then? Typically a company would have a file server, which is the electronic equivalent of an old school filing cabinet. It stores all your computer files and allows you to define different folders to share with the various roles in your company (i.e. Sales, Engineering, Accounting, etc…). You can define permissions or ACL’s (Access Control Lists) that limit what each person or role can see. You probably don’t want your staff to see each other’s performance reviews, salary or any other sensitive information.
Nowadays there are a few different ways to implement a file server. You could choose to run a local server right at your office or you could choose to store your files in the cloud. Let’s look at a few of the options together.
Local File Server
This option gives you the most control, but puts the cost of managing and maintaining the hardware fully on your shoulders. This can be a good option if you have an IT person on call or on staff to set things up and help you out whenever there’s trouble. Hard drives fail all the time, need to be replaced and can cause data loss if things aren’t set up right. By the way, the same thing applies to the laptop or computer where you’re currently storing your files of course.
While I’m not a Microsoft fan for a number of reasons, this is one product where Microsoft really shines. You can run the app on all your computers and mobile devices so you always have access to all your files. There are a number of different plans to choose from to suite your needs.
If you want to maintain full control of your data, and need a GDPR compliant data storage solution, Nextcloud in its various forms is something to think about. It’s open source software with available enterprise plans and support. You can run it on your own local server, or choose an existing Nextcloud hosting provider, or even host it yourself on AWS (Amazon Web Services) with the help of your IT person of course. There are Nextcloud apps available for all major platforms and mobile devices to help your team collaborate seamlessly. It natively manages contacts and calendars on all your devices and even allows you to automatically backup photos and documents from your mobile devices. There are a variety of plugins to enable additional functionality. You can start for free and upgrade to enterprise plans as you grow. This is what I use and is one of my favourite solutions!
You can compare some common solutions here to understand what the different services offer. No matter what solution you choose, the end result should allow your team to collaborate effectively and get their work done. When using the cloud services, there’s no hardware to manage, replace or upgrade and you can just focus on managing and growing your business!
As always, I want to leave you with some words of encouragement. The available options out there these days are dizzying and can leave you confused and frustrated. Take your time, do your research and ask around to see what others are using. Don’t be afraid to try something different than the crowd, or try a few different solutions before you settle on one! You never know, you may discover a gem with great features at a great price that can serve your business well and grow with you.
Please don’t forget to visit my website and subscribe to get my weekly blog in your inbox.
Until next time,
Ernst Bergen
B.Sc. Mech. Eng.