In retrospect cloud hosting and “the cloud” as a whole is a relatively new concept. As technology develops and the systems we use expand we can expect that the way that we access and store this data to as well. For the longest time we used dedicated or shared servers (basically beefed up computers) to serve our data to our clients. Now a new technology has gained huge traction. The cloud for the past few years has been a huge buzzword that we are starting to see everywhere, from hosting our sites (Rackspace, GoDaddy, Code Blue Hosting, etc) , to storing our personal data (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc) the cloud has become a huge part of our everyday online lives.
So what is this mysterious “Cloud”? In essence it is just a group of servers that are often kept in multiple data centers across the world that share resources and distribute the load. The benefit over this over the old Dedicated Server or Shared Server setup is:
- Scalability: Unlike dedicated servers or shared hosting, your data or website is not just loaded on one server. It is loaded on the resources of many, making it easy to add more resources in a click of a button. This scalability not only benefits your business in prices (you only pay what you need/use) but it also allows your website and data to scale as your business does.
- Data Security and Redundancy: With cloud hosting because your resources are spread among many different physical devices your website or data will not go down due to a hardware or natural failure. This allows for your business to maintain high availability on it’s website and data and as a whole ensures that your data is safe and secure. Hosting your data on the cloud also makes it easy to take regular backups and snapshots of your data so you can revert back to them if your data becomes corrupt or you accidentally delete a file.
- Speed and Reliability: The cloud allows you to pool the resources of many machines and datacenter and as a result of that you and your customers benefit from quicker load times. Most cloud servers are hosted on fast SSD drives that allows for quick read and write speeds and because your data is often stored on multiple machines you can be sure that your data will be available when you need it.
As the cloud becomes more and more prevalent, prices are coming down. Nowadays any small business can fully move any of their data (company programs) or website to the cloud with little to no hassle. This revolutionary technology has truly changed the way we access and utilize technology. Gone are the days were spending many hours and dollars just to maintain a simple website.
If you have any questions about cloud hosting feel free to leave a comment below: