The IT industry has evolved greatly over the last few years with cloud computing being one of the most popular trends nowadays. The term "cloud computing" is used almost everywhere to describe any network that's out of your control and sometimes even any hosted service in the internet. That is not a completely fair, but a point is that cloud computing is a completely new model of delivering services to the end user. It is focused on eliminating of your dependency from usual hardware and software by giving you remote access to them via different devices such as PC, laptop, tablet or even smartphone. If we're talking about private use, the advantages are quite obvious.

But what about the modern business? Does it really needs such a solution as cloud hosting or should it be better to stick to old dedicated servers? Here I'll outline the key features of cloud hosting for business use:

• Scalability. One of the greatest advantages of cloud technology is its bursting ability. Imagine your business is growing much faster than you planned - it means that you'll need to increase your servers' capacity, network bandwidth etc. With usual VPS or even dedicated hosting plan you'll need quite a time to do this and that means loss of prospective clients while your server is down. Cloud hosting has not such a problem. Its scalability potential is always at hand providing necessary resources on demand. First of all, this means that you are prepared for sudden and strong traffic spikes. It's impossible to do such a thing with a dedicated hosting server and your best option with it would be to get much more expensive hosting plan and use it only on traffic spikes thus making it cost-ineffective.

• Redundancy and reliability. Recent events and disasters taught us that your data can't be safe in one place especially if it's in a close distance from you. Another important feature of the cloud is the ability to be prepared to any sort of disaster that could make your servers down. The redundancy ensures that if one or even a few of servers in the cloud are down you have more of them to back you up. This is achieved by the cloud technology itself because your data is stored on many servers and until at least one server is up, it remains safe.  

• Ease of use and performance. Cloud hosting can provide the user with everything he needs: from basic resources like on the virtual machine to full network infrastructure. So, you don't have to buy and upgrade complicated equipment, don't need the space and time for installing it. This also means you don't have to hire special personnel to watch over your hardware. Cloud hosting provides software and multi-platform environments for development and doesn't need a lot time and knowledge to implement and study it.

• Overall cost and maintenance. First of all the start-up cost with cloud hosting won't make you shocked. The cost will depend on the plan you will choose, but you can rescale it at any time you want. The next thing that dedicated servers lack is cloud models such as infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service, desktop-as-a-service, software-as-a-service, etc. These services give you access to hardware, software, network and other solutions that would cost you a fortune if used on a dedicated server. Also what needs to be said that the maintenance costs on cloud hosting could be reduced dramatically because of no need to install software on every computer in a company and hire the support staff for your server management.

Cloud hosting is becoming more and more popular in the modern business field mainly because of its flexibility, reliability and cost-effectiveness. The stability, safety and accessibility of data are also among the major concerns here because the world is changing rapidly and companies need to be prepared for it.

What are your thoughts about the recent development of cloud computing? Feel free to share your comments below.

Author Bio
Post by Jonathan Gretton - a PR and community manager at http://www.ourinternet.us/ that is a reputable provider of cloud and virtual servers for various business needs.