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. Computing resources such as CPU/processing, memory, input/output bandwidth and storage capacity can be increased or decreased as needed without disrupting system performance.

Cloud elasticity aims to avoid overprovisioning or underprovisioning a particular service or application. Overprovisioning (allocating too many resources) leads to unnecessary expenses, while underprovisioning (allocating too few resources) means that some users will not be able to access the service. Many companies have benefitted from moving their IT infrastructure to the cloud in recent years. One of the main advantages is elasticity.

What is elasticity in cloud computing?

An elastic cloud service allows companies to use additional computing power and storage when needed. This additional capacity can then be released when it is no longer required. Scaling elasticity capacity up and down must be fast and automatic. Delaying growth can lead to server overload and outages, while delaying shrinkage means servers remain unused and the cloud budget is wasted. An ‘elastic cloud’ describes the process of a cloud provider adapting resource allocation to dynamic workloads so that it is possible to scale resources up or down.

The degree of cloud elasticity depends on how fast a 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 usually have a usage-based pricing model in their portfolio. The pay-as-you-go model allows new infrastructure components to be added in preparation for growth.

Cloud elasticity and cloud scalability ensure that both customers and cloud platforms can meet the changing demands of computing. While scalability helps manage long-term growth, elasticity ensures excellent service in the present. It also helps prevent system overload or higher cloud costs from overprovisioning. Elasticity ensures customer satisfaction for cloud platforms as the system operates at a consistently high level.

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 Boxing Day 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, cancelled 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.