We are all aware that most companies have a traditional data cloud storage structure, making their information vulnerable in one centralized data center with many potential security risks.

However, what if companies could place their data in a decentralized infrastructure? What benefits would they have? What would the process look like? How much money would companies save in doing this?

This article will provide the answers to those questions and more. But first, let’s explain the current situation of centralized data centers.

Current Conditions of Centralized Data Centers Worldwide

The total number of internet users worldwide grew by 332 million in the past 12 months, with more than 900,000 new users each day. To respond to these off-the-charts growing rates, companies have developed massive centralized cloud computing and data storage centers. Unfortunately, therefore, the server’s Internet infrastructure is usually placed only in the most advanced regions of the planet, plagued with deficient distribution to the rest of the world.

On the other hand, it takes time and billions of dollars to construct hyper-scale data centers that could remedy this situation. At the same time, not all aspects of environmental impact are considered in the creation of such facilities, which makes the situation difficult since the usage of electronic devices made up between 10-20% of the world’s electricity supply in 2020.

Nevertheless, the Internet is the world's largest network of information, so it is essential to have a secure, decentralized infrastructure and inexpensive architecture to store, share, and — in an ideal world — control our information.

P2P Cloud Storage Is the Best Way to Keep Your Data Private and Secure

A peer-to-peer cloud storage network is a decentralized and encrypted platform based on nodes, where these nodes are people around the world who store data in the most secure and private way.

But, why should we decide to move to a peer-to-peer network? Consider these four reasons:

1)  100% Secure and Censorship-Resistant

Because there is no centralized server, P2P systems do not have a single potential breach point and thus a single point of failure. As a result, any server may fail catastrophically, resulting in data outages and impacting millions at one go.

The strength of P2P cloud storage is generated in the nodes distributed around the world, where data is cut into pieces before being stored on different nodes and is reconstructed only when needed by the user. This means that if a node shuts down, the self-healing decentralized infrastructure will redistribute data to other nodes and make it fully available on the network again in milliseconds.

On the other hand, censorship is increasingly used on the Internet, demonstrating that it isn’t the free and neutral environment it used to be. There are three forms of censorship today:

1. Prohibiting people’s access to particular Internet destinations and services.
2. Disabling access to disruptive technologies that enable users to overcome censorship.
3. Identifying users who are circumventing censorship.

Several censoring tools are available, where most of them take advantage of the fact that circumvention traffic is easily identifiable.

That’s why everyone needs access to a P2P cloud solution and a thoroughly reliable and globally scalable P2P filesystem.

2) Decentralized Ecosystem

Having a peer-to-peer secure infrastructure is essential for any web3 solution to efficiently scale Hosting web3 solutions and storing data on such infrastructures provide some major advantages. Here are two benefits:

Efficient Data Download

File download time is one of the most critical performance indicators for any project. In a peer-to-peer cloud storage network, download times are incredibly fast as the network finds the shortest paths for data to transit, and doesn't depend on centralized servers to relay the information. The result is reduced latency, shorter and more sustainable paths, multiple hop connections, and cross ISP traffic the bottlenecks to make data download faster.

P2P networks are able to take the most efficient routes as the infrastructure is distributed across many locations and therefore data can be stored closer to where it is needed the most.. It can be compared to a "global peer-to-peer network VPN" that operates on top of existing networks and seeks any avenue to connectivity. At the periphery, strongly authenticated.

More Cost-Effective Infrastructure

On the other hand, P2P cloud storage eliminates the need for costly centralized servers that require ongoing maintenance and monitoring. Also, to support data centers’ hardware stacks, enormous cooling systems are required to keep them cool, leading to unnecessary extra costs. By having many people and organizations hosting the infrastructure anywhere around the world, a lot of efficiencies are achieved. This allows storing large data sets with significantly reduced costs.

3) 100% Autonomy

The data centers that operate today are monitored by semi-automated processes, where the only way to verify that things are going well is through supervisors. Unfortunately, this makes the system vulnerable to human error and malicious hacking possibilities.

Therefore, if decentralized cloud storage systems were used, these overheads and backdoors would be eliminated since the system would be 100% controlled by autonomous technology that can execute all workloads.

4) Environmentally friendly

One of the significant benefits of migrating from traditional data center storage to a peer-to-peer network is the high energy-saving capacity. According to Computational Research, companies could end up using 87% less energy if they migrate to cloud storage.

Nevertheless, the challenge of maximizing energy savings in the IT industry must be continuous, so it has reached a level of proclaiming carbon neutrality. While some may argue that this is environmentally friendly, it decreases the quantity of green energy accessible to the rest of the economies they operate.

Finally, there is one P2P cloud storage alternative that fulfills these requirements: ThreeFold — an integral solution created to solve the specific issues mentioned above. ThreeFold is a + decentralized, secure infrastructure and self-contained decentralized internet network, offering evolving efficiency and innovative ways of connecting people around the globe.

5) Data Breaches and Power Outages

Remember the last time that you saw news related to data breaches and power outages in the data storage industry? These happen all the time and some unrecoverable consequences have occurred throughout the past years because big tech companies settled their data inside traditional data centers.

When a data breach happens, it is normally because of:

1. A lack of internal security
2. Unreliable data storage hardware
3. Weak user passwords.
4. Cyber-threats against centralized data centers
5. The human error leading to backdoors in the system

On the other hand, power outages occur because of:

1. Single point of failures
2. High data traffics that can’t be supported by centralized servers Meteorological reasons (Storms, earthquakes, high wind, snow)
3. Cyber-attacks to centralized data centers

As you can see, most of the causes that generate data breaches and power outages can be fixed if companies could implement a peer-to-peer network to manage their data, which makes ThreeFold the best solution.

Why You Want ThreeFold As Your P2P Cloud Storage Solution

With ThreeFold, your data is distributed across a decentralized cloud network of nodes that use ThreeFold’s ultra-secure and open-source software. Together, these nodes form a global grid of interconnected compute and storage that can host all forms of data and applications

At the same time, ThreeFold’s decentralized nodes have their IPv4 and IPv6 address. They are fully interconnected, and all traffic on the ThreeFold’s network is encrypted and conceived to be a complete peer-to-peer infrastructure, making it impossible for data to be stolen, modified, or shut down. This is very different from blockchain consensus mechanisms where data is shared across the network. On ThreeFold users benefit from a unique private environment accessible only via their private key.

Don't store your data on vulnerable and centralized storage systems, the time has come to switch to P2P cloud storage.