The old adage is, "Don't place all your egg's in one basket". We've all heard it many times, but have we ever really taken that advice? I mean, most of us use GMail, Google calendar, Facebook, Google's photo storage, or because we have a Mac or iPhone we use iCloud. Why? Well, because of ease of use and simplicity sake right?
I mean, you buy a brand new iPad or iPhone, and the first thing it does when you turn it on is try to force iCloud down your throat. When you tell it no, it reminds you a second and a third time. Finally, it leaves you alone, that is until you upgrade the store or the operating system, then it reminds you again.
Most would say, "Why not?". Well, the old adage is true, if you do place all your egg's in one basket the basket is likely to break. It's truer now with big data giants like Google and Apple holding all your data. We take data for granted, but your business is run on data, your taxes are run on data - we no longer have picture albums but digital photos that are all stored on our phones, or the iCloud, or Amazon Prime Photo Storage.
If knowledge is power, then owning that knowledge is supreme power. What is more knowledge than your data in today's digital age, think of all the things in your life that are connected; Personal photos, Contacts you've made over 15 years of business, your calendar/schedule, your gigabytes of emails, documents - the list goes on. Just look how Google now tracks all phones GPS to be able to alert you how busy a restaurant is in real time, all without you ever lifting a finger.
Now for some of this there really isn't a solution, I mean most people use Yahoo, or Gmail, or Hotmail for their emails solutions. I personally have a Gmail account for my personal non-work email. Not much you can do unless you own a business and have hosting or email solutions incorporated. Or is there??
The Solution
Here at Microtronix, we don't like big data giants, we practice owning our own data as much as possible and encourage our customers to do the same. We also encourage, like with your finances, spreading out the risk as much as possible. I mean, you wouldn't trust your companies funded 401K for your sole means of retirement, would you? Or Social Security? So why trust one backup location/solution, or why trust iCloud with all your priceless pictures?
For us, we always recommend multiple backups locations to all customers for data backups. For our own backups, we run local, then remote, then from remote to AWS storage. 3 points of failure, all automated.
For our data like documents, etc., we don't trust Google Drive or Dropbox. Here at Microtronix, we run our own cloud solutions, and you can too!
There is an awesome solution called NextCloud that allows you to run your very own cloud server with; Documents, Drive, cross-platform syncing, Calendar, Contacts, Notes and so many other features!
We've been using NextCloud for years here at Microtronix and recommend it to all our customers. Myself personally, my phone syncs all contacts, calendar, and photos to my personal Cloud. It then syncs it to my Tab and my iPad, all automatically for me. If I ever switch phones I don't have to back anything up, I simply reset the old phone, install my NextCloud app on the new phone, then sync all contacts and calendar to the new phone. In an hour I'm ready to go!
It simply requires a VPS server to run, then you own all your own data! Granted your data is hosted on a VPS server which a Datacenter or hosting provider owns, but if you keep multiple backups then you too have access to your own data on your own terms. Multiple points of failure is the name of the game!
In Microtronix' case we manage our customer's cloud's completely and their backups, so all you have to do is use it! And the great thing about NextCloud is it syncs your Contacts, Calendar, even pictures all automatically from any devices. It's just like using iCloud or Google's Contacts and Calendar syncs. But you own your data!
To see the destructive nature of what big data companies can do head over to NextCloud's blog here and read the story. It's scary to think someone else owns your data!
If you're a business owner or an individual, and you want out of the big data scheme, contact us today and we'll help you get out and on the road to owning your own data!
