What is cloud hosting?
Whether you are from the computer field or not but if you use a smart phone, you must have come across the word cloud. Let’s understand cloud hosting with an example.
Let say you run an architectural business in which you have to visit construction sites in order to manage your work. For that you need everything handy. You cannot ask your clients every time to visit your office to see the designs. Also you cannot carry bunch of papers and storing huge amount of data in your smart phone will also not work. This is where the company should invest in cloud hosting.
In simple terms cloud hosting uses resources from different clustered servers. A single physical server is divided into multiple virtual servers which are known as virtual machines (VMs). So, instead of using a single server (which in our example can be your office server), your website can tap into cluster that makes use of resources from a centralized pool. This means you can retrieve your website on any server, anywhere and if one server fails other server comes into play to keep everything going on.
There are majorly 3 types of cloud hosting providers. They are:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): It is used by the businesses which have their apps, programs and processes but use the infrastructure provided by the cloud hosting provider. The infrastructure is maintained by the provider itself.
- Software as a Service (SaaS): In this kind of cloud hosting, clients use the software solutions of the service provider. Remote servers are used to store, control and process data.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): In this kind of cloud hosting clients can develop and manage their software and apps without the help of infrastructure required to launch that software.
Who uses cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting can be used for different types of websites but it is majorly used by the websites which have outgrown their existing resources. For instance, a website is very popular among people for its clothing and traffic increases during festivals which cause strain on the shared resources; this is when the requirement of cloud hosting comes.
It can also be used by e-commerce websites, corporate websites and other websites which manage high traffic. Cloud hosting has several advantages over dedicated hosting such as:
- Easily scalable: Cloud hosting gives access to multiple servers. Thus scaling up is very easy when website encounters unexpected traffic. You can also scale up or down your shared resources immediately as per the requirement.
- Saves money: With cloud hosting you only pay for the server in use. Also the cost to buy and maintain hardware is reduced.
- Huge storage: Cloud hosting provides a wide memory to store all your data which can be retrieved any time from the server.
- Easy recovery: If you have several websites and use multi server hosting then keeping backups of every activity is difficult. Cloud hosting comes with an advantage of easy recovery. You data are not saved in a single server thus it cannot be lost even in the cases of natural disasters.
- Automatic updates: Your website gets automatically updated with the latest technologies if it uses cloud hosting.
When your business should adopt cloud hosting?
Cloud hosting is expanding its wings in every kind of business due to the advantages it provides. Businesses get access to wide variety of IT based services with cloud hosting. Although it comes with certain risks but if those risks are taken proper care, they can be overcome. The question is when your business should adopt cloud hosting.
If you are using a traditional hosting then you might consider the benefits of migrating to cloud hosting. Consider needs of your business and decide whether it requires migrating to cloud hosting or not. We will make your work easy. The following points will help you to decide the same.
- Cloud hosting provides high performance, 100% uptime and high bandwidth. Use it if you need to manage high traffic levels.
- Consider migrating to cloud hosting if you require solid security and very high speed of your website as sometimes high traffic might slow down your site or even make you offline.
- Your business should use cloud hosting if it is in an area which is prone to any kind of disaster.
- If your website experiences traffic during some season while on other seasons it does not. Cloud hosting provides easy scalability with which you can easily scale up and scale down storage space.
- If you do not have budget to spend on purchasing inventory, you should opt cloud hosting even if your business is at the starting point. Benefit is you just have to pay a monthly fee and can utilize all the resources you want.
- If your employees spend most of their time on job sites or overseas, cloud hosting will help them to extract the documents where ever they need.
No matter if you own a small business, cloud hosting is always a better option as it will serve you the best in long run. Cloud hosting has enabled efficient handling of business.
Choose wisely, you need not to spend at buying hardware and other accessories. Pay little and get more.
If you are already using any cloud hosting, do tell us. We will help you in choosing the right type of cloud hosting for your business.