Digitization has become an integral part of businesses these days. Other than normal IT services, businessmen are incorporating many other technologies in order to make their venture high grossing and global. One such technology is Cloud hosting.
Ever since Cloud came into the picture, every techie has been going on about how it will change the whole way the work is carried out and how revolutionary it is. But is Cloud Hosting really that revolutionary? Or it is just a buzzword which everyone will forget after some time?
- A recent survey conducted by Gartner revealed that by the end of 2014, 750 million people would be using Cloud professionally. This is not a small number considering that only 5 years ago no one knew what Cloud technology was.
- The survey also says that by the end of this calendar year, 60% of the server workload would be virtualized.
Why Cloud Is Such A Hit
The reason which makes Cloud such a successful hosting platform is that it is very cost effective and provides a vast array of features such as:
Scalability
- The user can change the amount of storage or processing capacity according to his need, thus saving him from the hassle of buying new equipment every time the company decides to expand.
SaaS
- Today, there are a huge number of SaaS vendors in the market, who are offering software services like CRM and QuickBooks hosting.
- The vendors provide services using the servers kept in their own data centers, keeping customer oblivious to the intricacies and details of managing such equipment. All that a client needs to worry about is his core process, increasing productivity and reducing stress, which is present in maintaining one’s own server.
- Consumer pays for the service being received in a pay-as-you use model.
Anytime anywhere access
- Globalization is at its apex at the moment. Every entrepreneur has to go to numerous places in order to make his venture a global success.
- Cloud helps in such a situation. By using Cloud, one can access and edit the company’s database from any place, with only requisite being a good internet connection.
- But it’s not all sunshine in the Cloud. The model has some downturns and one of them is latency. Cloud hosting needs an internet connection to work seamlessly. Which means the speed of the connection determines the connectivity with the Cloud. So, if the connection is not healthy enough, Cloud would suffer from bandwidth issues.
- No such difficulties are faced when the services are extracted from in-house servers. So if the internet connection is sluggish, both the company and service provider are helpless.
- Second drawback of cloud hosting is the data security. It doesn’t matter how secure the data is, but if it is distributed as it is in the Cloud some hackers will find a way to break in and manipulate the data.
- Locally this is not an issue as the access is very limited. And more so, the data can be encrypted in local servers.
All That Glitters Is Not Gold
The Cloud is giving companies a lot of opportunities for growth, but along with that, it is providing a few headaches as well. Security issues have been plaguing the growth of Cloud and will continue to do so as the clients still are not fully convinced by the measures that are being taken to make the data secure. There have not been any major breaches so far but one cannot rule out the possibility of that happening; as they say prevention is better than cure.
The current status of Cloud is a bit in the dark but the future is surely bright. Every internet major has their own Cloud hosting. These offerings are compelling others to take the plunge and use the amazing capabilities of the cloud.
