What is cloud hosting and what are the benefits?

More and more medium-sized busi­nesses are opting to rent IT resources from pro­fes­sion­al hosting providers instead of pur­chas­ing IT resources and employing spe­cial­ists for their main­ten­ance. As a result, different ap­proaches to hosting have developed, which are suited to different use cases. We’ll explain what cloud hosting is and what to be aware of when making the decision to switch to cloud hosting.

What is the dif­fer­ence between web hosting and cloud hosting?

In general, hosting models can be grouped into two main cat­egor­ies: server (web hosting) and cloud hosting. With serving hosting, a customer rents IT resources for a monthly fee, with different packages offering different levels of per­form­ance. This option allows customers to rent a physical server for their exclusive use. It’s also possible to share the computing resources of a physical server with other customers. The first option is known as dedicated server hosting, while the latter is referred to as virtual server hosting.

While some busi­nesses may want to implement elaborate web projects with pre­dict­able resource re­quire­ments, other busi­nesses may be looking for a hosting package that can quickly and seam­lessly respond to changing demands. For the latter, dedicated server hosting is not the right solution. When it comes to the modern IT needs of busi­nesses, a more flexible solution like cloud hosting is a more suitable option. This re­l­at­ively new hosting concept is similar to virtual server hosting but differs in that a vir­tu­al­ised server is spread across multiple physical servers, instead of just one. Ad­di­tion­ally, costs in cloud hosting are typically billed on a minute-by-minute basis. This offers a higher degree of flex­ib­il­ity and scalab­il­ity, providing a clear advantage over tra­di­tion­al web hosting models.

How does cloud hosting work?

Like virtual web hosting, cloud hosting is also based on vir­tu­al­isa­tion, a process where multiple virtual servers share a physical server. With virtual web hosting, there is one physical server for a number of virtual servers. As such, they cannot be dis­trib­uted across multiple servers and locations. With cloud hosting, virtual servers are able to access the resources of multiple virtual machines that are hosted on different computers. This makes it possible for an ap­plic­a­tion to be dis­trib­uted across a cluster of in­ter­con­nec­ted servers that provide IT resources on demand.

What types of cloud hosting are there?

Similar to web hosting, cloud hosting models can also be divided into several cat­egor­ies. The models are grouped according to how tasks are divided amongst the customer and the hosting provider.

• Public cloud: The public cloud is a hosting model where the hosting provider provides the hardware and takes care of the main­ten­ance and avail­ab­il­ity.
• Private cloud: In a private cloud, all tasks and costs are taken care of by the company itself. This type of cloud is es­pe­cially relevant for large en­ter­prises and is referred to as an internal cloud or a corporate cloud. In this model, the cloud in­fra­struc­ture is not rented from a hosting provider.
• Hybrid cloud: As the name suggests, a hybrid cloud is a com­bin­a­tion of the two models above. There are many pos­sib­il­it­ies for cus­tom­isa­tion under this model. One example of this cloud model would be a tra­di­tion­al on-site cloud data centre that is in­teg­rated with an external public cloud.
• Managed cloud: A managed cloud is most similar to a public cloud. In addition to main­tain­ing and providing hardware, the hosting provider also takes care of op­er­a­tion­al processes (such as mon­it­or­ing and security) and ap­plic­a­tion software. This is par­tic­u­larly be­ne­fi­cial for customers who want to focus on their core business op­er­a­tions.

What are the benefits of cloud hosting?

1. Cost reduction

Of course, the biggest advantage of a flexible cloud hosting service is the immense reduction in costs. Rather than having to invest in in-house IT in­fra­struc­ture, cloud computing provides the op­por­tun­ity to cost-ef­fect­ively meet the resource re­quire­ments of new projects using vir­tu­al­ised servers. With a pay-as-you-go structure, cloud users are provided with a re­fresh­ing change to tra­di­tion­al web hosting models, which demand sub­stan­tial fees even if the server is barely used. The cost of main­ten­ance, repair and inventory of the IT in­fra­struc­ture is also sig­ni­fic­antly lower with a cloud service provider, as the bulk of the necessary hardware is already provided.

Cloud hosting makes it possible for smaller en­ter­prises to have access to IT resources that had pre­vi­ously only been available to big busi­nesses. The cloud also makes it easier for startups to enter into IT-intensive business sectors.

2. Flex­ib­il­ity and scalab­il­ity

Through vir­tu­al­isa­tion, cloud hosting offers the flex­ib­il­ity needed to promptly adapt IT resources to a business’s demands. This is of par­tic­u­lar im­port­ance for web projects with fluc­tu­at­ing traffic. If, for example, the traffic in an online shop increases tenfold due to seasonal business, the per­form­ance features of a cloud server (such as RAM, CPU and online storage) can be expanded with just a few clicks.

It is important to note that projects that are con­stantly growing can also benefit from the cloud hosting model too. If a web project exceeds the peak per­form­ance of the dedicated server it is relying on, migrating to a new server will be in­ev­it­able. With cloud servers, on the other hand, ad­di­tion­al resources can be added any time as needed. This is made possible by vir­tu­al­isa­tion based on a network of closely in­ter­con­nec­ted server clusters. Instead of being located on a single physical machine, user data is dis­trib­uted across several servers. When demand decreases, the added ca­pa­cit­ies can be reduced straight away and as a result, idle capacity charges are avoided.

3. Shortened de­vel­op­ment cycles

The cloud’s flex­ib­il­ity is par­tic­u­larly ad­vant­age­ous for startups and de­vel­op­ment de­part­ments of bigger companies. In­vest­ment costs for pilot projects remain man­age­able since the required resources are readily available. Fur­ther­more, new ap­plic­a­tions can be tested and marketed sub­stan­tially faster. Instead of assigning the time-consuming and costly task of pur­chas­ing new hardware to an IT team, cloud hosting offers de­velopers the op­por­tun­ity to generate any number of test servers with in­di­vidu­ally scalable per­form­ance features in the virtual en­vir­on­ment.

Cloud hosting’s redundant server ar­chi­tec­ture also means users benefit from backups, ensuring that various de­vel­op­ment stages of a web project are re­triev­able. All of this results in reduced de­vel­op­ment cycles, securing not only a com­pet­it­ive advantage for companies but sig­ni­fic­antly cutting down on costs as well.

4. Data security and avail­ab­il­ity

Since the IT resources of a cloud server are provided by a number of physical machines, cloud hosting users benefit from com­pre­hens­ive server hardware re­dund­ancy. This ensures that more than one backup copy of user data is stored on the servers in the data centre at any given time. Potential failures of any hardware com­pon­ents, such as a hard drive crashing, have no impact on data security or the avail­ab­il­ity of the provided resources.

Out­sourcing IT services offers medium-sized busi­nesses the ad­di­tion­al advantage of being able to gain access to technical pro­ced­ures and security protocols that would be chal­len­ging to implement with their own resources. Due to the legal re­quire­ments that come with providing server hardware resources, web hosting service providers are con­stantly working to safeguard their data security in ac­cord­ance with national and in­ter­na­tion­al le­gis­la­tion.

What are the en­vir­on­ment­al benefits of cloud hosting?

Cloud hosting not only offers busi­nesses immense ad­vant­ages; the en­vir­on­ment also profits from the shared usage of in­di­vidu­al com­pon­ents of IT in­fra­struc­ture. Data centres that are designed for providing cloud servers have far more effective processes for power supply, vent­il­a­tion and fire safety than those available in an in-house server room. Fur­ther­more, many hosting providers use climate-neutral elec­tri­city and renewable energy for the main­ten­ance of their data centres.