The Advantages of Cloud Hosting and Cloud Virtualization

March 10, 2015

Increasing numbers of organizations are employing cloud computing. Expenditures by end-users for cloud computing services are expected to exceed $180 billion in 2015. Cloud hosting is growing at a rapid pace. What are the advantages of cloud hosting and cloud virtualization?

Virtualization is the process of separating work processes from the hardware itself. Compute, network, and storage resources are allocated as needed by the organization based on fluctuating demand. This is often done through the use of a hypervisor, which allows the use of multiple platforms, operating systems, and protocols.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is an on-demand service that provides resources to users through a dashboard or online portal. End-users or administrators can manage programs and platforms as needed. They access hard drive space, use software, allocate resources and other tasks through a dashboard or control panel.

Cloud hosting has multiple advantages. Rapidly growing startups or corporations do not have to worry about peak loads. Processing power can be easily expanded to accommodate seasonal changes, sudden demand, or other spikes of inactivity.

Quality cloud virtualization providers also employ a significant number of redundant servers in order to guarantee maximum uptime. Few things will slow down business growth than a website or service that is not available to customers. Redundant systems provide security in case a server goes out or other technical problems. Business operations can continue without interruption.

Concentrate on Strengths

Another advantage of cloud hosting is the hosting vendor takes care of all the maintenance and management of hardware. This frees up companies from the significant time investment of evaluating, testing, and purchasing new servers and other equipment. Instead, they can concentrate on growing their business.

In addition, cloud virtualization provides significant customization. Organizations can easily refine, alter, change, expand or contract their needs as the situations change. They can also employ multiple operating systems, scale up resources and change their environment as requirements vary during a business cycle.

Cloud virtualization and cloud hosting provide flexibility, manageability, easy maintenance, and economical advantages to organizations of all sizes. They avoid the significant time investment of obtaining and maintaining hardware and software, and instead can focus on their core strengths of gaining new customers and growing revenue.

One of the biggest benefits of cloud hosting is that it reduces the need for companies to buy, operate and manage their own IT infrastructure. With a cloud model, a company can simply outsource all of its IT needs to a professional third-party service provider and focus instead on its core business mission. The model allows companies to eliminate much of the cost and complexity associated with an internal IT organization. It also allows them with easy access to computing resources on an as-needed, pay-as-you go model. Importantly, cloud-hosting providers make it easier for companies to comply with regulatory and industry-specific requirements.

Technology advances such as virtualization and blade server technologies have allowed cloud service providers to offer a wide range of hosting options for companies. Many cloud providers for instance, offer shared hosting services in which they use shared hardware, software and network resources to host applications from multiple companies. Shared hosting is often a very cost-effective option especially for small and medium businesses that need access to IT resources but may not always be able to afford the cost involved in buying and managing their own hardware and software.

In addition to shared hosting, many cloud providers offer dedicated hosting services in which they host and manage a customers applications on separate, dedicated hardware and software platforms. A dedicated model is usually more expensive than shared hosting but it gives companies access to their own managed hardware and software resources. Many medium-sized and large companies use dedicated services for running their enterprise applications.

Some of the best cloud hosting services also offers colocation services under which they rent out space in their data centers for other customers to use. With colocation, a company can install its equipment at the service providers location, and have it managed by the service provider. The colocation service provides the power, the network bandwidth, and the data center facilities and also manages and administers the hardware for the customer.

The best cloud hosting services typically run highly secure, well-managed data centers and offer high levels of service availability and stability. They typically maintain redundant hardware, software, network, and data center infrastructure to ensure uninterrupted service in the event of a failure at the primary data center.

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