If your company isn’t using cloud-based hosting, it’s missing out. In case you’re not familiar with this option, here are nine advantages that should convince you it’s the best.
Affordability
Running a business these days costs a lot of money. As much as technology has made things easier, every new piece of software or hardware also comes with a new cost.
Fortunately, as beneficial as cloud-based hosting is, it will also save you money. Traditional hosting means employing a staff that can watch over it around the clock, paying for the space it will take up and the massive amount of hardware it requires. As time goes on and you need more digital space for your hosting needs, you’ll also have to invest in greater amounts of hardware, too.
Customization
As we just mentioned, traditional hosting means bulky hardware that will have to be modified as time goes on. These modifications may not just have to do with your size requirements, though. You may also find that you simply need different resources for your evolving needs. With the cloud, this is something you can do with ease and without spending a lot of money.
Scalability
Along the same lines, scalability is one of the key benefits of using cloud hosting. It goes both ways, too. Next month, your website traffic may increase so much that you need more space. The following month, this sudden spike may die and paying for that extra space become unnecessary. If you’re using the cloud scaling in either direction it’s easier and, again, more affordable.
Centralized Hub for Data
Many estimates state that as much as 70% of a company’s production data is stored in the mainframe or at least originates there. This means that a cloud platform residing on your system has secure access to critical information that can be shared whenever necessary with encryption, access controls, data masking, data security and integrity.
Improved Security
That provides a great segue into our next point, which is that the cloud will give your company improved security. Your system will be physically hosted by a company that has the resources to house your servers behind several levels of physical security. Their entire business model also revolves around keeping hackers at bay, something your company probably couldn’t do.
If an attack does occur or some other issue arises, these companies have staff on hand 24/7 to react on your behalf.
Better Uptime
Using the cloud means you can easily have a private server for your company. One of the many benefits of this feature is that your resources aren’t being impacted by the other companies using the same server.
Imagine if a company on your server was hit with a DDoS attack. This malicious action seeks to knock a website offline by overtaxing it. Thus, when successful, it takes a whole server down. This would impact companies that weren’t even targeted by the attack.
Uptime refers to the amount of time your website is available on average. You want it to be 100% or you could lose sales. With the cloud, having 100% uptime is much easier.
Compliance
More and more industries these days are heavily regulated by the government. If you need to fall into compliance to keep your company in business, using the cloud may be a requirement.
Consolidated Workloads
Finally, when you optimize your cloud hosting service, it’s easy to consolidate your company’s workloads on the mainframe. At the same time, you can provide sufficient isolation among your different systems, reducing licensing fees that would arise if you went with distributed systems.
While there are countless reasons the cloud is an advantageous solution for your hosting needs, the nine we just covered should be more than enough to convince you it’s the right investment for your company.