What is Cloud Elasti­city?

Cloud elasti­city refers to how IT resources adapt to system re­quire­ments in real time. Companies can quickly and ef­fect­ively respond to a temporary increase in demand on their servers without needing to commit to a cloud plan that pro­vi­sions more resources than the company would typically need.

Why is cloud elasti­city important?

An in­creas­ing number of companies are out­sourcing parts of their IT ca­pa­cit­ies to a cloud. Cloud elasti­city is the automatic pro­vi­sion­ing and de­pro­vi­sion­ing of resources from a data centre when demand from a customer increases or decreases. This allows cloud resources, including computing, storage and memory resources, to quickly be real­loc­ated as demands change. This dynamic ad­just­ment is a typical feature of modern cloud services, which can be scaled as needed.

Computing resources such as CPU, RAM, input/output bandwidth, and storage ca­pa­cit­ies can be increased or decreased as needed, without in­ter­rupt­ing system per­form­ance.

The goal of cloud elasti­city is to avoid over- or under-pro­vi­sion­ing of a par­tic­u­lar service or ap­plic­a­tion. Over-pro­vi­sion­ing (i.e., al­loc­at­ing too many resources) leads to higher costs than necessary, while under-pro­vi­sion­ing (al­loc­at­ing too few resources) means not all users can access the service. In recent years, companies have benefited from the ad­vant­ages of moving their ap­plic­a­tions and IT in­fra­struc­ture to the cloud. One of the main benefits is elasti­city.

What is elasti­city in cloud computing?

An elastic cloud service allows you to use more computing power and storage when needed, and release them again when the ad­di­tion­al capacity is no longer required. The elasti­city process must happen quickly and auto­mat­ic­ally. A delay in scaling up would lead to server overloads and downtime. Con­versely, if a necessary scale-down is delayed, the servers would remain unused, which would waste the cloud budget. When a cloud provider adjusts resource al­loc­a­tion to dynamic workloads, enabling the use of more or fewer resources, the service is referred to as an elastic cloud. Elastic cloud platforms are often cloud-native systems spe­cific­ally designed to seam­lessly adapt to changing workloads—without manual in­ter­ven­tion.

The degree of cloud elasti­city depends on how fast a cloud provider can allocate different resources in response to changing customer re­quire­ments. Offering this dynamic option is an enormous advantage. Before the era of cloud computing, the server and driver ar­chi­tec­ture had to be expanded to respond to sudden peaks in demand for bandwidth and in­fra­struc­ture. This approach to handling peaks in demand required large upfront financial in­vest­ments in hardware, data centres, power and network bandwidth.

This is no longer a problem thanks to cloud elasti­city and af­ford­able cloud hosting solutions. Capacity can now be auto­mat­ic­ally increased or decreased as needed. This elim­in­ates the upfront costs and in­stall­a­tion time as­so­ci­ated with tra­di­tion­al methods of setting up an ap­plic­a­tion and IT in­fra­struc­ture ar­chi­tec­ture on site.

What does cloud elasti­city bring to a company?

Elasti­city improves company per­form­ance and is cost-efficient. Elastic cloud providers have system mon­it­or­ing tools which track and analyse the util­isa­tion and al­loc­a­tion of resources. These two metrics should match to ensure that the system is per­form­ing at its maximum capacity and at a low cost. Cloud providers typically offer a usage-based pricing model, where the company only pays for what it uses. With the ‘Pay as you expand’ model, new in­fra­struc­ture com­pon­ents can be added to prepare for growth.

Cloud elasti­city and cloud scalab­il­ity ensure that both customers and cloud platforms meet the changing demands of data pro­cessing. While scalab­il­ity helps manage long-term growth, elasti­city ensures seamless service avail­ab­il­ity in the present. It also helps prevent system overloads or excessive cloud costs due to over-pro­vi­sion­ing. In cloud platforms, elasti­city ensures customer sat­is­fac­tion. The system remains smooth and high-per­form­ance through­out.

What are the ad­vant­ages of cloud elasti­city?

• Easy scalab­il­ity: On-demand computing resources allows managed cloud hosting providers to quickly deploy the exact services and in­fra­struc­ture a business needs.
• Lower costs: Companies can reduce their IT budgets by avoiding in­vest­ments in IT in­fra­struc­ture. Using the pay-as-you-go model for cloud elasti­city means that you are only charged for the resources you use.
• Greater re­dund­ancy: IT teams can leverage more flexible, reliable and cost-effective backup and recovery solutions with ac­cess­ible off-site computing resources.
• More capacity: Elastic cloud storage services offer virtually unlimited storage capacity.
• Easier man­age­ment: With cloud services, IT teams no longer have to worry about pro­vi­sion­ing, main­tain­ing and upgrading in­di­vidu­al parts of the IT in­fra­struc­ture.
• High avail­ab­il­ity and re­li­ab­il­ity: Resources are auto­mat­ic­ally pro­vi­sioned in the back­ground without the end user noticing.
• Increased agility: The elastic cloud makes IT in­fra­struc­ture more agile and flexible, allowing new users or customers to use the system with ease.
• Increased pro­ductiv­ity: Auto­mat­ic­ally pro­vi­sion­ing and scaling resources gives in-house IT staff more time to focus on core business functions.
• Increased flex­ib­il­ity with workload changes: Or­gan­isa­tions do not have to worry about their website crashing when traffic increases.

How is cloud elasti­city used?

The goal of cloud elasti­city is to ensure that the resources that are allocated cor­res­pond to the resources required needed at any given time. This means that cloud elasti­city is im­ple­men­ted wherever peaks in required computing capacity need to be adjusted.

E-commerce

E-commerce websites may host events such as discount sales, pro­mo­tions, or limited-edition items, which can attract a larger number of customers than usual. Cloud elasti­city allows for adequate resources to be allocated during increased demand so that customers can make their purchases.

A company running an an­niversary sale or Black Friday promotion can expect a lot more traffic and server requests. This puts more pressure on servers than at other times of the year. An elastic platform allows for flexible resource provision to ac­com­mod­ate this higher demand. The ad­di­tion­al ca­pa­cit­ies can be returned to the cloud provider af­ter­wards.

Customer service

In­dus­tries with existing customers may also ex­per­i­ence high customer activity at certain periods during the year. For example, when contracts are changed, canceled or ter­min­ated at the end or beginning of the year. These times of year are generally as­so­ci­ated with a sharp increase in data traffic. Without elasti­city, this spike in traffic would overwhelm existing capacity and lead to a service outage. ‘Server un­avail­able’ messages would appear on users’ screens and reflect poorly on the company.

Cloud elasti­city makes it possible to manage demand in real time without customers noticing a change in per­form­ance. The re­spect­ive cloud provider will also only bill for the resources used and not for the number of virtual machines provided. Once the rush in traffic has ended, the virtual machines can be released from the elastic cloud platform to reduce cloud expenses.

Summary: Cloud elasti­city saves resources and costs

Cloud elasti­city gives en­ter­prises and IT or­gan­isa­tions the option to handle un­ex­pec­ted surges in demand without having to maintain the extra equipment. Cloud elasti­city is a forward-looking feature for IT in­fra­struc­ture. It helps companies stay op­er­a­tion­al during peaks in demand and improves flex­ib­il­ity and avail­ab­il­ity. It also leverages a pay-as-you-go model, which is cost-efficient for IT budgets. Busi­nesses can get the most out of cloud elasti­city computing by choosing a cloud provider who oversees the pro­vi­sion­ing, managing and scaling of cloud resources.