Article

New AVPreserve Resource on Assessing Cloud Storage

By: Joshua Ranger
February 20, 2014

AVPreserve Consultant Seth Anderson wrote in a blog post earlier this week about the need for a practical approach to assessing cloud storage and other cloud services for use in an archival or preservation-oriented environment. He points out how “The misinterpretation of cloud services and their operations — and a number of operational hiccups in many service providers’ development of their products — has kept preservation organizations from readily adopting cloud computing,” but that such services must be seriously considered as an alternative for organizations with limited budgets, infrastructure, and support for the storage of digital files at a preservation level.

To help organizations dealing with these issues, AVPreserve will be publishing a new series of resources grouped under our initiative Feet on The Ground: A Practical Approach to The Cloud. Seth has been researching and communicating with cloud service providers over the past year, and the initial result is the first paper, Nine Things to Consider when Assessing Cloud Storage, an outline of nine topics to review when looking at cloud storage solutions, along with explanations of the topic area and a series of questions to ask as part of your review. Over the coming weeks we will also publish a series of reviews conducted by Seth on storage providers, and continue to add to or update the series as the market changes.

We hope these resources and the Feet on The Ground series helps our colleagues in overcoming the challenges of digital preservation, and we encourage your feedback. As with our other papers, Nine Things to Consider when Assessing Cloud Storage can be found on our Papers & Presentations page, or via https://www.avpreserve.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/AssessingCloudStorage.pdf.

Joshua Ranger