In today’s modern business environment, every visionary business owner or leader is looking to cut costs and maximize efficiency. As technology continues to evolve, organisations and institutions are looking for new and innovative ways to manage their web hosting requirements. Cloud hosting, currently a popular buzzword, has become an effective and revolutionary method. Everyone is moving to the cloud. What does it mean to move to the cloud? How does cloud hosting work and is it better than traditional hosting? We will try and address these questions and help you make an informed decision.
What is Cloud Hosting?
Cloud hosting encompasses the storage of your data across various servers. This makes it accessible from anywhere, providing that you have a device and an internet connection. Your cloud hosting services are often taken care of by vendors. Vendors store your data in multiple data centers around the world.
Cloud hosting is often compared and contrasted to traditional hosting. Traditional hosting includes dedicated and shared hosting. Organizations are increasingly looking for alternatives to traditional solutions. While there are certainly respective benefits to each hosting solution, we will be sharing why you should opt for cloud hosting.
6 Advantages Using Cloud Hosting
1. Scalability & Flexibility
A significant advantage to cloud hosting is the scalability of it. This is especially beneficial for smaller organizations or companies that experience quick growth, like start ups. You can easily add or reduce various resources such as storage and bandwidth, according to the news of your organization. On the other hand, you would be unable to do the same with traditional hosting at the same ease and speed.
In addition, your organization is not bound to any servers that you otherwise would be due to traditional hosting. This is because with traditional hosting, you might be finding yourself opting for physically closer locations to maximize load times. On the contrary, cloud hosting servers are accessible with a device and an internet connection from anywhere.
2. Cost Efficiency
With cloud hosting, you do not have to worry about capital expenditure on infrastructure – providers handle that for you. Additionally, you only need to pay for the services and resources that you are actually using. In a traditional hosting model, however, you need to invest in infrastructure and also pay a fixed amount for services and resources regardless of whether you use them.
3. Backup and Disaster Recovery
The cloud hosting multi-server setup allows for data to be automatically backed up. This provides for a fast and easy disaster recovery feature.
In the single-server setup of traditional hosting, disaster recovery is not feasible as there is only one server that hosts your data and applications. For disaster recovery, you need to make special arrangements for backup.
4. Ease of Mind
With the cloud, you generally work with a vendor or a server host. Vendors offer customer support and service to help ensure that your organization is equipped to focus on your operations. You have a trained and specialized team to help in case you are facing any technical issues.
Especially for smaller organizations who may not have a dedicated IT team, this can be a beneficial alternative. Some vendors may even provide 24/7 support to ensure that you have your needs met around the clock.
In addition, your vendors provide secure cloud solutions. This can reduce data security risks for your organization. Your vendor should be able to tell you about how your data is being kept secure. This can be in terms of their various policies or procedures in place to ensure security.
5. Latest Technology
Cloud hosting takes advantage of the latest technologies. You can automatically integrate and customise your software applications based on your business’ needs and preferences. This includes software versions, server upgrades and processing power.
Traditional hosting does not allow you to automatically customise or upgrade.
6. Traffic & Uptime
With many connected and dedicated servers, you will have less downtime. In the case that a server fails, another one can simply take over. However, this is not the case with traditional hosting, which relies on a single server instead of multiple servers.
Once one server goes down, it can result in lengthier downtimes. With less downtime for your organization’s applications and website, it can result in higher productivity for your team.
