The future of the Cloud Storagee is no less than a dream. AI-enabled objects (e.g, self-driving vehicle), the web of IoT devices, and 5G connectivity (i.e, mobile communication technology) is changing the way of living.

The recent advances in smart technology generate massive data traffic. The 51 billion devices forecast is a big number: even seven times greater than the whole world population. These devices will increase the annual size of the global data sphere up to 175 ZB. Another report states, that more than 331 billion dollars will be invested in the cloud up to 2023.

It needs special techniques and infrastructure to process the incoming data. Furthermore, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in smart devices increases the data production value dramatically. With this rapid development in smart technology, cloud storage is getting more and more attention. Along with AI, blockchain is adding safety and security to cloud storage. This technology in storage is getting mature and will increase customer trust in the cloud.

Cloud Storage Future & Its Opportunities

The future of the cloud is no less than a dream. AI-enabled objects (e.g, self-driving vehicle), the web of IoT devices, and 5G connectivity (i.e, mobile communication technology) is changing the way of living. The IT industry is rapidly changing everything. Its simple and easy user interface; no cost and capacity constraints; and other numbers of features are attracting the individual and market.

Remote Accessibility

Remote accessibility (i.e, access from everywhere and at any time) is the core of cloud storage. The fast network speed and AI is making it smarter and faster. Leading cloud providers (i.e, Apple iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive etc) are providing fast and reliable remote services to their users. Remote access allows one to store and retrieve items from cloud storage without needing to create a physical connection.

Accessibility of storage devices is getting interested after introducing high storage devices and high bandwidth networks. Remote access increases the usage of cloud storage and business. In the presence of internet services, cloud storage can provide seamless access to data files. The coming 5G internet service will make accessibility very easy and smart as real-time access.

5G Connectivity

With this high-speed technology, humans will be able to virtually operate any machine at a distance of thousands of KMs. This will reduce the latency up to 0 ms. Such a big speed will minimize the need for a local hard drive. This technology will be able to store and process data on the cloud without facing any jitters or delays. It is making real-time use possible. 5G is a new era of cloud storage.

Internet of Things (IoT)

With the introduction of the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of devices connected to the internet has increased enormously. By 2025, 75 billion devices are expected to be connected to the Internet processing 75 ZB of data annually. This is a great number and will need high technology to process and store this data. These figures clearly show that cloud storage has great worth in the coming years. Furthermore, the use of smart devices is also dramatically increasing. These devices are small in size and do have not enough space to store or process big data therefore, they depend on the cloud.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

From facial expressions to self-driving vehicles, AI is pro- progressing very rapidly. AI is making smart decisions in complex situations. Today AI is called weak AI which performs limited tasks such as recognizing facial expressions and driving a car, however, the future will have general AI which will perform a task just like human beings. AI is making cloud storage further smarter and more attractive. Furthermore, the use of blockchain in storage is making it more secure.

Usability

The provider business directly depends on resource utilization. Today technologies massively increase cloud usage because it provides a very easy and reliable user interface. Usually, cloud storage has a local desktop folder for PCs and mobile devices which allows users to move files back and forth between the cloud and the local system using drag-and-drop facilities.

The integration of smart technologies (i.e, IoT, AI, fog and 5G), makes cloud storage usability very easy. The 5G will provide a high bandwidth like real-time access. Its cost is very low compared to buying the devices, which is very appealing.

Disaster Recovery

In today’s modern world, data is the most valuable asset. Losing it, cause irreversible damage to the business (including loss of productivity, income, reputation and even customers). Business enterprises use cloud storage as a backup for their important files. In cloud storage, data is stored in three different locations and in case of any disaster, data may easily be recovered.

Furthermore, cloud storage provides remote access to files therefore, these files can be used for recovery of their system in case of any emergency or disaster. 5G technology made the recovery process very easy and fast. Compared to traditional disaster recovery, cloud storage recovery is very easy, cheaper and fast. High investment, staff and maintenance are required for local disaster recovery sites.

Cost Saving

When we talk about the cloud, it means that we are getting the resources of a supercomputer at our home without buying it. We actually, hire these resources at very cheaper rates which saves the capital investment of the consumer. Cloud storage is used by various types of business enterprises to reduce their annual database operation expenses.

Especially, medium corporations, which are not able to invest too much in storage infrastructure, hire cloud storage. This saves their major investment. Storing one gigabyte of data using cloud storage services costs about three whereas a user can achieve further saving in terms of power consumption as remote cloud storage does not need internal power. Cloud storage saves operational and maintenance costs and just as per their usage.

Invisibility

The word storage creates the imagination of a big physical device to store big data. Big data and storage mean a big physical device, which will need operation and maintenance. However, cloud storage does not need physical space and user access it remotely. Cloud storage services, use virtualization techniques to provide resources to customers.

Customers do not know the complexities and working of the back end. Cloud storage is invisible and provides storage transparency, with no physical presence on the user side. It does not take up valuable space in the office or at home. It does not need to spare a huge space for rocks and storage. Customers only hire the services and use them on the go.

Privacy and Security

Security of cloud storage for sensitive and confidential in- formation is usually higher than that for locally stored data, especially for enterprises. It uses advanced security (i.e, advanced firewalls, event logging, internal firewalls, intrusion detection, data replication, encryption, and physical security) to protect the data from outside attacks.

Different type of security layers is used to protect the data houses. Concerning individual storage, enterprises invest more in security. Storage services in the cloud used encrypted data both in transmission as well as at rest ensuring no unauthorized access to data files. AI, 5G, IoT and blockchain are improving privacy and security.

Automation and Synchronization

Cloud automation is a term for the processes and tools that are used to reduce the manual effort involved in provisioning and managing cloud workloads. Cloud storage is self-managed and does not need any human effort. The main issue most businesses and customers have is the proper follow-up of data backup. Cloud storage provides an automated data backup service to ease this tedious process. A user simply needs to tell the system what and when to back up, and the cloud service takes care of it by itself.

Another attraction of cloud storage is automatic synchronization. The synchronization process ensures that user data files are automatically updated across all of the user devices. In this way, the latest versions of the user’s data files are saved on his/her local device and available on all other user devices like the user’s Smartphone etc. 5G made syncing easier and now the devices work in real-time.

Sharing and Collaboration

Cloud storage makes sharing easy. Whether it is a photo or a file or even a folder containing hundreds of information files, storage services in the cloud make it convenient for a user to share it with a few clicks. Furthermore, it makes the files available everywhere and at every time. Online cloud storage services are also ideal for collaboration purposes. It allows multiple users to collaborate and edit a single document or data file. Users do not have a concern about tracking the up-to-date version or who has made what changes.

Massive Devices and Big Data

As mentioned earlier, up to 2025, approximately 75 billion devices will connect to the internet, and this will process more than 175 ZB of data per year. This is a very large figure and requires a lot of cloud storage. These predictions will drastically change the need for cloud storage. This shows that cloud storage has a very bright future ahead.

Conclusion and Future Directions

The recent advances in the IT industry (e.g, Cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), Fog computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain) is rapidly revolutionizing cloud storage. Especially, the 5G facilitation (i.e, minimum access delay and ultra-high speed) boosts the use of cloud storage dramatically. This article presented different challenges, their countermeasures, opportunities and the future of cloud storage. it seems that cloud storage is designed to be a highly scalable and conveniently manageable storage system rather than an efficient file system.

Further, it is revealed that despite the ease of use and economic benefits, cloud storage technology still suffers from numerous problems. The cloud storage architecture is mostly clouded by security (e.g, confidentiality, integrity, access, authentication, authorization and data breaches) and data management issues (e.g, dynamics, data segregation, backup, and virtualization). To counter these threats, various measures are proposed in the literature. .

For example, for the security of data, digital certificates are used along with a trusted timestamp approach. Similarly, confidentiality is ensured through cryptography solutions while for data access issues, attribute-based encryption is mostly used. Access control is achieved through authentication and authorization. To maintain the integrity of the data, a global transaction manager is used to ensure fail-safe management of transactions across multiple databases.

Finally, it can be concluded that cloud computing (along with integrated technologies) is a fast-growing technology which rapidly changing traditional computing. However, still, a lot of research efforts are needed to attract customers, especially business and enterprise customers to store their sensitive data, using cloud storage.

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