Working from Home has catalyzed the need for digital transformation. For Small and medium-sized businesses it’s not only finding features in an IT product but there are additional challenges of online safety and ease of use.What SMBs need is a product that allows them to safely store, share, and collaborate on files from anywhere, without a recurring subscription; and Synology NAS fits the bill perfectly.
Public Cloud and SaaS don’t cut the mustard for SMBs
Quick setup and low initial costs make Public cloud appear very lucrative, but once your business starts to grow the problems become obvious when the Low cost per head starts to add up as you expand and hire more people.
Take for example Google Workspace- US$144 per user, per year for a Business Standard Plan. The seemingly low-cost investment starts to add up if you do the math for a firm of 30 people for 3 years. The firm would have spent US$ 12,960 in 3 years and will have to continue to do so; on a subscription basis to keep using the essential services. Now for half that CAPEX, you can own a NAS server for life.
Traditional on-premise file servers aren’t perpetual either
Ongoing cost to own SaaS is not the only reason that many companies opt to go with on-premise file servers. More than the cost, Going on-premise means having full ownership of your data with physical custody of the very medium your data stays on, owning the hardware, and enjoying local speed and security.
Traditional file servers are built using Windows File Server licenses with a bunch of client access licenses. However, this still requires recurring subscriptions for Windows File Server and CALs, which can grow as you expand – same as Cloud. Though you own the hardware, the software is still subscription-based and accessing files from the internet, mobile access, and collaboration are not easy to set up.
NAS offers On-premise Private cloud, owned for life
The name NAS is a bit of a misnomer as the NAS have grown from being simple Network-attached Storage to Network-attached Server. Data Protection, File sharing ( from anywhere over cloud), and collaboration are the most basic features that NAS offer, and then there are vendors Synology for instance, who have further developed rich built-in applications and collaboration suites that not only save on costs but also greatly simplify management.
Synology NAS devices also have intelligent data protection and security to mitigate cybersecurity threats, and backups suits to backup data from Windows Bases PC/Servers, Microsoft 365 and google workspace. So feature-wise, a NAS offers more than cloud solutions.
Cost-wise, since you only invest once, NAS can offer great value. For a business of 200 Employees, a modern NAS server populated with drives can cost on average US$ 3000- with no further recurring fees. At the least, you would keep the unit for 5 years and then move it for offsite data protection. Great value compared to SaaS solutions.
Scalability-wise, expanding the capacity is easy either with Expansion units or buying larger hard drives, on the same purchase-to-own model.
Cost, features, and Security all are in favor of NAS solutions, making them the right choice to replace or complement traditional file servers and cloud services. What makes Synology so popular among the NAS comes down to the enterprise features of DSM OS that powers Synology NAS.
