Customers looking for cloud storage seek agility, flexibility, scalability, and most of all cost savings. Even if a cloud storage provider seems expensive, cloud storage pricing is still far cheaper then having to buy in-house storage hardware.

The process of shopping for cloud storage services has recently shifted. Not so long ago, concerns about security, accessibility, and data transfer rates in the public cloud drove demand for private cloud and hybrid cloud storage. But the major providers have largely addressed these challenges. As a result, the strong push toward the private cloud has faded. Enterprises now have relative confidence that public cloud providers can offer reliable storage at an affordable price in tandem with sufficient data safeguards.

Top Cloud Storage Providers

These cloud storage platforms are worth investment, not only for their position at the top of the market but also for their reliable and powerful platforms. We’ve selected some of the biggest players in the market as well as newcomers that show promise and provide excellent service to their customers. The data storage industry is shifting regularly, and both the top companies and the startups have excellent technologies to offer. Not all of the pricing is exhaustive, but it’s a sample of these enterprises’ storage costs.

Choosing a Cloud Storage Provider

Businesses selecting cloud storage should be aware that public cloud storage is infrastructure as a service (IaaS) that provides block, file, object, and hybrid cloud storage services. While the services are standalone, they are often used in conjunction with compute and other IaaS products. Services are priced in several different ways, primarily by capacity, data transfer, the number of requests, or a combination.

The leading cloud storage vendors provide on-demand storage capacity and self-provisioning capabilities. They additionally offer features like integration with other IT infrastructure, artificial intelligence, or data and application transportation.

Alibaba Cloud Storage

Alibaba Cloud LogoAlibaba is well known and well-regarded in the cloud industry, though it’s not yet made much of a dent in the US market with the long-term dominance of Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. It is the leader in the Chinese market, is very strong in Asia, and is gaining ground in Europe.

Alibaba Cloud provides a wide range of cloud offerings that include storage, which makes its cloud storage offering more attractive for firms with international operations. Businesses can easily leverage their other tools — like artificial intelligence – as they use Alibaba’s storage platform.

Alibaba’s extensive menu is split into several storage services for object, block and file storage. It also offers a cloud storage gateway software appliance.

Alibaba has enhanced its cloud storage capabilities via artificial intelligence, aimed at the image and video recognition markets. The Asian giant’s Cloud Intelligence Brain is advanced AI tech for heavy business analytics and data processing.

Given the Chinese government’s intense focus on moving AI forward, it’s likely that Alibaba will continue to be a leader in this technology. It experienced pushback in recent years due to concerns about the dominance of Chinese tech and influence, but it experienced growth in 2020 and is investing heavily in the cloud storage market.