It is becoming increasingly common for medium-sized businesses to rent IT resources from professional hosting services, rather than buying them outright and having to supply their own specialists for maintenance. Some enterprises have even gone one step further and decided to use the processing power and storage capacity of an external hosting service, the two most prevalent forms of which are dedicated hosting and virtual private servers. For a monthly fee, customers can hire specialised web hosting IT resources in various packages, which include features such as web space, RAM, and CPU performance. The only difference between the two hosting services is the exclusivity of the hardware components available. With virtual hosting, several users share the resources of one high-performing server. Using a dedicated server, on the other hand, means that entire server and all its hardware components are available to a single customer. This offers unrestricted performance, extensive configuration options and maximum security. Due to these merits, the dedicated server was considered to be the ideal web hosting model for businesses for a long time.
But of course, not every company is seeking to carry out their online projects with predictable resource requirements. A dedicated hosting service will not always satisfy the demands of contemporary IT, which requires fast and uncomplicated reactions to the user’s commands. A flexible cloud hosting service is therefore a great alternative. This relatively new form of web hosting, which combines a cluster of several connected servers, offers a wide range of IT resources and a clear advantage over classic web hosting models. Still not convinced? The following four points will persuade you to make the switch to cloud hosting.
Of course, the biggest advantage of a flexible cloud hosting service is the immense reduction in costs. Rather than spending valuable resources on purchasing IT infrastructure, cloud computing allows users to save money and focus their attention on new projects. Thanks to the pay-as-you-go structure, cloud users are provided with a refreshing change to traditional web hosting models, which require substantial fees, even if the server is barely used. The maintenance, repair, and inventory cost of the IT infrastructure is also significantly lower with a cloud service provider, as the bulk of the necessary hardware is already provided. It is therefore possible for smaller enterprises using cloud hosting to have access to IT resources that had previously only been available to big businesses. The cloud’s emergence as a big player for IT-intensive businesses can partly be credited to the recent start-up boom.
Through virtualisation, cloud hosting offers the flexibility needed to promptly adapt IT resources to a business’ demands. This is of particular importance to web projects with fluctuating traffic. For example, seasonal businesses can experience a tenfold increase in web store traffic. In such cases, a cloud server’s performance characteristics such as RAM, CPU or web space can be altered in just a few clicks. It is important to note, however, that projects with a growing user base can also benefit from a cloud hosting model. Migrating to a new server is inevitable for projects exceeding the peak power of their respective dedicated servers. With cloud servers, on the other hand, an extensive range of additional resources can be added at any time. Thanks to a virtual environment based on a network of closely linked server clusters, user data is shared across several servers, rather than being located on one physical machine. With fewer requirements, the added capacities can be reduced straight away and idle capacity charges can therefore be avoided.
The cloud’s flexibility is particularly advantageous for start-ups and for the development departments of bigger companies. Pilot projects can maintain manageable investment costs, as 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 set up an unlimited number of test servers with individually scalable performance characteristics in the virtual environment. This also allows cloud hosting to benefit from a redundant web server architecture, meaning that all the development stages are retrievable. Due to everything operating in the form of a reduced development cycle, cloud users do not only have an advantage against competitors, they also significantly cut down on operating costs.
Since the resources of a cloud server are available from a number of physical machines, cloud hosting users profit from an extensive range of servers. This guarantees that several copies of the user data backups are saved on a regular basis. Potential outages of hardware components such as hard drive crashes affect neither the data security nor the availability of the provided resources. Outsourcing IT services offers medium-sized businesses with the additional advantage of being able to convert technical processes and security procedures internally at their own leisure. Due to the legal requirements for provision of hardware resources, web hosting service providers are constantly working to safeguard their data security in accordance with national and international legislation.
Cloud hosting not only offers businesses immense advantages; the environment also profits from this communal use of individual IT components. Data centres specifically designed for cloud servers have far more effective power supply processes, ventilation and fire safety, than what is available within individual companies hosting their own internal servers. Furthermore, numerous hosting providers use climate-neutral electricity and renewable energy to power their data centres.
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