Cloud computing can be a very general term, but for businesses, it can represent an opportunity to scale down infrastructure overhead and achieve higher levels of efficiencies. These efficiencies include both reduced costs and increased access to resources and data. Of course, whether or not any of such service actually makes sense for your business will depend the size of the business, its needs and overall sales mandate. So before investing in any such service, it’s important that you understand its implications and weigh them against your greater business model.
Cloud Hosting
When cloud computing meets meets web hosting technology, the result is a kind of hosting that lets businesses dynamically scale and rescale their resources according to their specific business needs. This means that your hosting packages can be adjusted on an as-needed basis as your traffic fluctuates. This kind of flexibility lets businesses save money by only paying for the resources they need, but still avoid downtime from their servers going over capacity.
In a nutshell, cloud hosting is perfect for any technology-based company that (1) relies on its web-based technology, (2) cannot justify over-investing resources into a hosting solutions “just to be on the safe side,” but (3) tends to experience significant flucturations in their traffic according to seasonal variations or growth spurts. These are businesses that are primarily web-based, so they can’t afford to experience any significant down-time. And what cloud hosting let them do is lease a virtual server, and then scale it on an as-needed basis as their business grows and/or fluctuates.
Most cloud hosting providers also offer businesses a choice of operating system (Windows or Linux), and gives them the self-service flexibility usually offered through other enterprise level hosting services, such as dedicated hosting. So when shopping around for a cloud hosting service for your business, ensure that it features flexible billing and server configuration controls via an API or web-based interface that you IT team can use to manage your cloud-based resources.
Cloud Storage
When cloud computing meets data back-up, the results is cloud storage. This kind of solution offers businesses high performance, future-proof and highly-scalable online data storage that can be used in three ways: (1) to back-up company data, (2) to allow employees access to data from anywhere, without the need for a VPN connections, and (3) to host their media files.
If you company stores a lot of data on local servers, it might want to consider migrating that data back-up to a cloud storage service. Not only will this allow you employees access to files without being on the company network, but it will also cut the costs associated with sytem network administration and having to house your own servers. Furthermore, if your company relies on media files to power its web properties, a cloud storage solution can significantly reduce the bandwidth costs of serving that media.
Of course, cloud storage is not ideal for sensitive data. Basically, any data that your company wants to keep secure and confidential should not be accessible from anywhere. But for all files and media that do not pose security concerns but are costing a lot to store, cloud storage might be the way to go.
Doing Business in the Cloud
In a nutshell, if you’re a technology based company that relies on its web online presence and undergoes fluctuation due to either seasonal factors or growth spurts, then cloud computing can help your company achieve additional efficiencies and reduced costs. It important, however, that you’re aware of any security challenges offered through cloud computing. After all, when you rely on the cloud, you have less direct control of your data. So while it might make sense to outsource some business components to the cloud, there will be others that you will want to keep under lock and key using in-house computing — regardless of the price tag associated with its maintainenance and up-keep.
With a cloud-based autoscaling solution, your application scales up and down in-line with demand. This means that you’re only paying for the compute resources that you consume.When it comes to developing new features in a timely manner, having a massive suite of production-ready services at the disposal of your keyboard is a developer’s paradise. Each of the AWS services is typically well documented and can be accessed programmatically via your language of choice.