Assuming you have not been living actually ON a cloud for the last year, you will have heard a certain buzz word mentioned frequently in recent times, both the world of business and among the technology community. The word I refer to is of course “cloud”. There is cloud computing, cloud storage and cloud hosting.
Just see the meteoric rise in the interest in everything cloud at Google Trends.
Cloud hosting has rapidly developed from a theorized prediction of the way technology was headed into an economical and superior solution for companies looking for a cost-effective hosting, server and storage services. It is estimated that by 2016, over 95 percent of the worlds biggest companies will use cloud hosting services.
Cloud hosting technology still has a few very minor concerns for certain companies (such as with privacy and security), the numerous advantages and undeniable benefits far outweigh them:-
- Reduced Costs – because cloud solutions are scaleable on demand, saving organizations money.
- Increased Storage – more data can be stored via cloud than on private computer systems
- Scaleability & Flexibility – cloud services offer much more flexibility than past computing methods
- Reliable Management by Skilled Technicians – cloud hosting providers offer reliable service and have skilled practitioners running huge datacenters with vast amounts of storage and computing capacity. They know what they are doing and their business hangs on their reputation as 100% reliable.
- Accessibility & Mobility – staff can access services, stored data and information anywhere, so no need to be in the office.Highly Automated – updates and maintenance can be provided by the cloud service providers so internal IT staff need not work to keep software up to date
- IT can focus on more important things – maintenance, security, server updates and other IT issues can all be taken care of by the cloud providers, so organizations can concentrate on bigger issues.
- Ease of Implementation – no need to purchase hardware, software or implementation services, cloud-hosting can be up and running in no time — and at a fraction of the cost of most onsite solutions