While cloud hosting isn’t the only solution offered by service providers, customers big and small have become increasingly attracted to the wide range of benefits and opportunities it offers. Indeed, a recent survey by PwC noted that 78% of respondents had now adopted cloud in most or all areas of their organisations . With this in mind, this post will take a closer look at how the cloud is transforming web hosting and how this benefits companies.
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Higher availability
As businesses and their customers continue to embrace digital technologies, we are seeing more reliance on critical applications that demand continuous availability. Indeed, when services like social media platforms, banking apps, major online stores and streaming services go offline, it often makes headline news. Downtime has serious consequences, impacting sales, tarnishing reputations and, for listed companies, affecting share prices. For those who host their applications and websites on dedicated servers, fixing hardware issues can be a timely process and have considerable repercussions.
One of the reasons the cloud has changed web hosting is that mission-critical applications are protected from the prospect of server failure. In the cloud, servers are virtual and can be instantly migrated to a different physical machine should a server problem be detected, thus ensuring continuous availability. What’s more, given the advanced monitoring that takes place in cloud data centres, this move happens well before any physical machine fails and service providers ensure there is always sufficient redundancy to move virtual servers if required.
Indeed, even if a flood or fire takes a whole data centre offline, the virtual servers continue to operate in another data centre located elsewhere. As a result, the cloud is the prime choice for businesses requiring guaranteed 100% uptime.
Discover: 6 Ways Businesses Use Cloud Computing
Cost savings and scalability
While all hosted solutions help businesses acquire infrastructure without the need for capital investment, the cloud provides yet another way for companies to save money, via its pay-as-you-go scalability. This feature of cloud hosting offers two highly popular benefits for companies. First of all, scalability enables companies to add additional resources as and when they need them, ensuring that the increasingly complex and resource-intensive workloads they run can go ahead without performance being affected. Indeed, today, additional resources don’t even need to be manually added as developments in resource monitoring and automation mean that if resource limits are being reached, additional capacity can automatically be increased. Those same systems also ensure that if additional resources are not being utilised, companies can scale down just as easily.
The second benefit is the financial one. Additional resources are charged for on a pay-as-you-go basis, and this means companies only pay for what they use. This is far more cost-effective compared to using a dedicated server, for instance, where you pay for all the resources all the time regardless of whether they are used or not.
Additionally, improvements in resource monitoring and management are helping to cut costs further. By utilising underused infrastructure to run workloads, companies can reduce the need for upscaling even more – even across different hosting providers. What’s more, with the use of AI, it is now possible to predict when peaks will take place and find the optimum and most efficient way to run workloads.
Faster deployment
Increasing the speed of deployment helps boost productivity, accelerates development and gets products to market quicker and less expensively. Using traditional technologies like dedicated servers, this could take considerable time, especially if the hardware required is bespoke.
Another way that the cloud is pushing hosting forward is that servers and applications can be deployed almost instantaneously. This speed increases a company’s agility, enabling it to respond swiftly to opportunities and challenges, test new ideas and innovate without the need for major upfront expenditure.
Which cloud do you need? Read: Cloud Deployment Strategies and Service Models Explained
Stronger security
Security is paramount for businesses given the high level of threats around today. Unfortunately, many companies lack the expertise, resources and tools to put comprehensive security measures into place. Cloud service providers benefit from economies of scale, enabling them to recruit security talent and implement the most robust security measures to protect their data centres. One of the most significant developments is the implementation of Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM). This proactive approach to eradicating both physical and digital vulnerabilities requires continuous monitoring to identify threats, assess the host’s ability to negate them and put measures in place to prevent incidents from occurring. This will include the use of security audits, 24/7 monitoring, advanced firewalls and intrusion and infection prevention tools.
Greener hosting
Sustainability is a major issue for the web hosting sector. Aside from the urgent need to reduce global CO2 emissions, the businesses the industry serves are seeking greener hosts, pushed in part by the demands of their own customers. According to Ericsson, the IT sector generates 730 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent or 1.4% of total global greenhouse gas emissions . CI&T, meanwhile, states this could reach 14% in the next 16 years, with data centres accounting for half of that growth .
However, cloud hosting actually offers one of the greenest ways to make use of IT infrastructure. Working at scale, cloud providers are better placed to optimise and manage how they use energy, enabling them to implement more efficient power, lighting and cooling systems. Furthermore, the development of more efficient technologies, e.g., the latest SSDs and virtualisation, together with techniques like dynamic provisioning, help cut emissions even further. As a result, modern cloud environments can operate far more efficiently than in-house data centres.
Cloud and AI
The technology that nearly all businesses are clamouring to make use of today is artificial intelligence. Its potential for organisations of all kinds is enormous. However, much of this would not be possible without the cloud. The cloud is the optimal environment for AI applications due to its scalability and the wide range of cloud-based AI services and tools that have been developed for it. Indeed, this now includes approaches like AI-augmented development, which uses AI tools to assist with coding, testing and design, potentially revolutionising how applications are developed and thus improving productivity, innovation and efficiency.
Are you an SMB? Read: Unlocking the Cloud – It’s Not Just For Big Business
Conclusion
While shared hosting, VPS and dedicated servers all have important roles to play in web hosting, the cloud is undoubtedly driving a new era in the industry. Its ability to provide businesses with all the resources they need to operate in a digital market and do so with cost-efficient scalability is one of its major attractions. However, it is also an environment that offers greater security, availability, speed and the potential for innovation. For digitally transforming companies seeking effective hosting solutions it is the future.
Searching for a cloud partner that can take your business to the next level? Take a look at our Enterprise Cloud Server solutions.
