You may have heard a lot about cloud hosting—but how exactly does this service potentially benefit your business?
Until the last decade, companies typically housed their applications and networks on physical servers—usually in their own private data centers. Some may have created redundancy by deploying physical servers at multiple locations that backed each other up. But cloud hosting changed the game by allowing a business to run its applications on virtual servers in the cloud. These companies hire a cloud provider to host their data and operations across a network of physical and virtual servers, which could be located in virtually any physical location. The cloud hosting solution is much more agile and flexible than conventional server setups. Organizations can satisfy all their network requirements by accessing an existing resource pool, scaling applications up or down as needed.
Cloud hosting also allows access to these resources without requiring a significant upfront investment—and that’s just one of its benefits. Let’s take a closer look.
The Ability to Scale Rapidly: Cloud hosting services are remarkably flexible, guaranteeing that available resources always match demand. A professional cloud hosting provider distributes resources as needed – more during busy seasons, less during a market slowdown. Companies don’t have to purchase and install new servers if sales spike, only to see the capacity wasted in the following year – allowing them to spend resources based on real-time financial reality.
Availability When It’s Needed: Cloud hosting providers have data centers that work to reduce latency and optimize availability for their clients. They invest in technologies such as load balancers and content delivery networks to ensure clients can access services and applications whenever needed.
Cost-Efficient Solutions for Business: The most significant expense associated with local hosting is the need to continually purchase new hardware, not to mention the infrastructure required to support it. Even after the upfront money is spent, the costly ongoing maintenance of that equipment becomes a reality. Cloud hosting addresses this issue by offering pay-as-you-go services that all but eliminate the need for maintenance.
Security SMBs Need: Cloud hosting providers purchase, maintain, and offer the robust security systems that today’s network requires to survive – and pass this security assurance onto their clients. The service provider keeps their systems up-to-date the most recent security patches and updates. This focus on security also makes them a logical choice as a partner in disaster recovery and business continuity programs, as they can provide data backup and recovery protections.
Shorter Time to Market Windows: Businesses looking to build their own IT infrastructure often face a significant time to market – from research, to budgeting, purchasing, and delivery, installation, and testing. When they take advantage of cloud hosting, however, they can confidently integrate new technologies much more quickly—and with the professional guidance and expertise they need.
Cloud Hosting is Based on Virtualization
Cloud hosting relies on virtualization, which allows multiple virtual servers to run on a single physical server. Each virtual machine (VM) provides a fixed pool of memory, storage, and CPU resources, running independently of other virtual machines on the same piece of server equipment.
As each virtual machine is separated and isolated, a company can deploy their own applications without fear of interference or non-compatibility. If a virtual machine experiences increased traffic, it can draw additional resources from the pool to ensure stable performance.
Cloud hosting providers offer virtual server access to clients as needed. With this flexible setup, companies can quickly deploy new VMs or allocate additional power to existing VMs, adapting their IT infrastructure as needed. In short, virtualization allows providers to create an effective and scalable solution that is completely isolated from other VMS on the same physical server.
Alliance IT is Your Cloud Computing Partner
If you are interested in learning more about cloud hosting, call Alliance IT today. And be sure to look for our next article on the types of cloud hosting available to you.
