‘Cloud’ one term that has taken over the World Wide Web like a wild fire and especially the online industry which has undergone a rapid development since the introduction of Cloud computing. Actually, different businesses seemed to interpret this technology differently, to some it seemed to offer an opportunity for reducing costs whereas others perceived it as a medium to enhance efficiency in their current work processes.
While those businesses that run mission critical applications involving greater risks considered cloud as a storage medium or as a DR (Disaster Recovery) solution. But, the crucial part for individual business segments lies in the identification of an ideal Cloud offering based on the business model.
Cloud as a Hosting Solution
With the introduction of Cloud, there isn’t much of a change in the basic concept of hosting, it’s just that applications and websites now utilize a Cloud environment. The merger of the two concepts has resulted into an extra ordinary service offering that allows users to scale according to the requirements in real time.
Due to such an enhancement to the traditional hosting model, users have been able to cut down on a substantial operational cost. This is basically due to the scalability features offered with the Cloud, where unlike the traditional method users now pay only for the resources that their website or applications have actually used, hence helping to govern the waste of resources and attaining efficiencies. Reduction in the overhead costs make users have a precise IT budget allocation, plus achieve a better control over the down-time issues.
Custom tailored web hosting solutions were next to impossible in the tradition model, but the Cloud has broken these barriers and have risen the expectations of users.
That’s due to the flexibility feature that comes default with the Cloud where nearly everything is customized. Despite the fact about the utilization of virtualization as the base technology, yet it isn’t something which comes with fixed resources alike traditional Virtual Private Server Hosting.
Many providers of cloud services has the provision of self management which further enhances the usability of the Cloud, this feature could only be found with enterprise level services or dedicated hosting solutions, previously.
While in process of identifying the right Cloud, it is essential to check for certain offerings such as server configurations, control panel, KVM etc. for your IT department get an access to the server and ease the management of your cloud based webspace hosting.
Cloud as a Reliable Storage Medium
There has not been any change in the importance of online back-up solutions, rather day-by-day due to the increased volume of online threats its popularity has rather grown stronger. With the Cloud buzz all around how can this segment be left untouched. So the cloud computing model was implemented for online back-ups, hence helping cloud to branch out further in the form of cloud storage solutions.
This took the segment of back-up services to the next level due to the performance enhancement offered by cloud. Enterprises could then be able to use this highly reliable solution ideally in three different ways as follow, to secure mission critical enterprise data, offering a simplified access to data irrespective of the geo-location and the ability to waive-off the restriction over the types of media.
So, incase you run a business that has a large volume of data which needs to be accessed and shared frequently, cloud storage can be a solution that can help you reduce the cost of internal network administration plus the need for managing your own server infrastructure. All data can be securely hosted on a cloud platform, which can be retrieved from almost anywhere provided you have an Internet connectivity.
Though, we still see Cloud to be in its embryonic stage and expect further advancements to come this way. If you are unsure about the security in a cloud, you may start with testing this technology by hosting your publicly available data into it.
Cloud as a Solution for Online Businesses
Enterprises and companies that uses high technology platforms to run their online business involving quite an uncertainty in resource utilization, should look for Cloud as an ideal computing solution. A detailed comparative analysis of your current hosting platform and cloud can help you find the best match for your requirements to meet your business expectations.
