Wondering how many gigabytes of storage the average business needs for their online drive? First off, there is likely no such thing as an “average” business, and every business will differ in their online drive needs depending on the industry it’s in, what the business goals currently are, and how many leads, customers, and employees it has.
But we can give you a good idea based on these factors how much space you could possibly need. The number of gigs, after all, will determine how much money (if any) your business should expect to spend on an efficient and secure online drive.
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How Much Should You Need on Your Drive?
With the increasing importance of cloud-based collaboration and remote work, it's crucial for organizations to determine the appropriate storage capacity for their online drives. This article aims to provide insights into the factors that influence the storage requirements of businesses and guide you in determining the ideal gigabyte (GB) capacity for your organization's online drive.
It is difficult to provide an exact figure for the amount of storage space a business generally needs. However, many businesses today rely on terabytes (TB) or even petabytes (PB) of storage space to meet their data storage needs. It is common for businesses to use network-attached storage (NAS) systems or cloud storage solutions. TruVISIBILITY's Drive gives you many price points and storage space options to fit your business needs exactly.
Let’s go over the factors that will help you determine how much space you’ll need for your drive.
Understanding Data Usage
Before calculating the required storage capacity, it's essential to understand the types of data your business generates and how it is utilized. Data can be broadly categorized into structured and unstructured data. Structured data includes information stored in databases, such as customer details or financial records, while unstructured data encompasses files like documents, images, videos, and audio files.
Consider how frequently your business generates, modifies, and shares this data. For instance, a creative agency that produces high-resolution images and videos will require significantly more storage compared to a law firm primarily dealing with text-based documents. Additionally, consider factors such as email storage, system backups, and software installations. These can contribute to your overall storage needs, depending on how much free space is needed to update or backup anything.
File Sharing and Collaboration with Employees
The size of your team and the nature of collaboration within your organization play a vital role in determining your online drive's storage requirements. If your business heavily relies on collaborative projects, such as shared documents or multimedia presentations, you need to factor in the storage space needed to store and share these files efficiently.
Figure out the number of employees who will be accessing and working on files simultaneously. If your team often collaborates on large files or works with multimedia content, you will require more storage to accommodate these requirements. Additionally, assess whether your business frequently interacts with external stakeholders, such as clients or partners, as this will influence the volume of data being shared and stored on your online drive.
Retention Policies and Compliance
Retention policies and legal compliance are critical considerations when determining your storage needs. Certain industries, such as healthcare or finance, are subject to strict data retention regulations. If your business operates in such sectors, it's crucial to allocate adequate storage capacity to comply with these requirements.
Evaluate your legal obligations regarding data retention and any industry-specific compliance standards you must adhere to. Determine how long you are required to retain data and estimate the amount of storage space needed to store data over that period. Factor in potential growth and expansion of your business, as well as any changes in regulations that might occur in the future.
Growth Projections
As your business expands and evolves, so will your storage needs. It's essential to consider the growth projections of your organization when determining the appropriate storage capacity for your online drive. Assess your business's historical data growth rate and estimate future growth based on factors such as new hires, increased client base, or product expansion.
To ensure scalability (meaning how much your business grows), opt for online drive solutions that offer flexibility to upgrade or expand storage capacity as needed. Many cloud storage providers offer scalable plans that allow businesses to increase storage capacity seamlessly without interrupting operations. This ensures that you can adapt to changing demands without incurring significant additional costs or disruptions.
How TruVISIBILITY’s Drive Can Help
Nearly any online drive you find is not very secure. If you use Google as a way to store files, for example, you should know Google has the right to access your information. Google Drive integrates with other Google services such as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, providing a suite of productivity tools for creating and editing documents directly within the Drive interface.
Though convenient, this also means that Google has access to everything on your drive… even the sensitive documents. So nothing is really secure with Google Drive or other online drives that hold the right to access any type of your information.
With TruVISIBILITY, there’s a much simpler cut and drive rule - no one has access to your drive but you and whoever you want to share it with. Even though you may use your drive to store documents to use on TruVISIBILITY’s Messaging app, Sites app, or any other digital marketing tool, TruVISIBILITY does not reserve the right to access or use any of this information.
Some of the things you can safely store on Drive for your business include:
- Certain financial documents - This may be a personal preference on how comfortable you feel storing financial information about your business and it may depend on who you share your drive with.
- Employee information - Such info could be phone numbers, addresses, salaries, job descriptions, etc.
- Business docs - These can be anything that helps the business run, such as marketing strategies papers, company-wide days off for holidays, and sales or profit information.
- Images and videos - Any marketing images or videos, including photos or company logos that go on the business website can be stored on the TruVISIBILITY Drive.
Register a freemium TruVISIBILITY account and get unlimited access to fully functional marketing software free of cost!
As your business grows, you only pay for what you use without any contract. A freemium TruVISIBILITY account allows you to:
- Create a chatbot that can conduct up to 100 conversations per month
- Launch email blasts, start drip campaign, etc with 1000 free emails sent monthly
- Send 1000 SMS texts per month
- Build 1 website including a blog
- 1 GB of storage usage
- 1 SSL certificate
- Unlimited API usage
The pricing is based on usage over the free monthly allotment. Thus it is extremely affordable for small to medium businesses. You can adjust the number of conversations your chatbots can have, the number of emails and SMS that can be sent per month, the number of websites you can deploy, and the capacity of your cloud storage. Simple and flexible!
Conclusion
Determining the appropriate storage capacity for your business's online drive requires careful consideration of various factors. Understanding your data types and usage patterns, collaboration needs, compliance requirements, and growth projections are essential in making an informed decision.
It is crucial to strike a balance between having enough storage space to meet your current needs and ensuring scalability to accommodate future growth. By carefully evaluating these factors and considering the unique requirements of your business, you can determine the ideal gigabyte (GB) capacity for your online drive.
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