🎄 Be Prepared: Why Christmas Stocking and Cloud Storage Have More in Common Than You Think

The sun might be shining now, but Christmas is already on the horizon — just 120 sleeps away. As the Scouts say: “Be prepared.”

For many businesses, preparing for Christmas starts months in advance. A small retailer might not have the buying power of a supermarket chain, but still needs to stay competitive. A restaurant owner might prefer to focus on perfecting a festive menu rather than trawling the internet for decorations. That’s where wholesalers step in. They’ve already managed the supply chain, filled their warehouses, and made it easy for members to stock up at trade prices.

The same logic applies to data. Companies are producing and storing more of it than ever, knowing it may be needed again — sometimes in less than 120 days. But rather than sink time and money into managing infrastructure, most would rather focus on what they do best: creating brilliant content, innovating with research, or serving their own customers. Just like retailers lean on wholesalers, businesses lean on cloud providers to handle the heavy lifting of data storage and management.

But here’s the thing: The dominant wholesaler Costco may already have Christmas trees on display (see pic), but it isn’t the only one. According to IBISWorld, the UK has around 4,000 grocery businesses. A Chinese restaurant in the South East, for instance, might prefer SeeWoo over Costco for its festive menu. Different wholesalers meet different needs.

The same is true in the cloud. AWS, GCP, Azure, and IBM Cloud are household names — the Costcos of the digital world. They’re great for scalable compute and general-purpose storage. But they’re not always the best fit. ElasticSearch has a sharper solution for data analysis. Wasabi focuses on hot cloud storage at lower cost. And at CloudColdStorage, we specialise in super-low-cost, long-term data archiving.

You don’t have to wait 120 days for data to chill either. Data that’s just 30 days old can be actively archived with us — and streamed back in minutes — cutting cloud costs dramatically.

At just £1.16 per TB, you’ll even have budget left over for the Christmas party.

So whether you’re prepping your shelves or your servers, don’t limit yourself to just one “Costco” of the cloud. Explore the full marketplace.

✨ Merry Christmas from all of us at CloudColdStorage