Clouds can provide users with a number of different benefits.
Many businesses iirespective of thier size are using cloud computing today instead of traditional on-site alternatives. There are a number of reasons why cloud computing is so widely used among businesses today.
Access from anywhere : The biggest advantage of cloud is to provide access to your infrastructure, services, applications, data from anywhere in the world and that too 24/7. In a way this is a greater freedom for the users of cloud as they can access applications and data from just about anywhere via multiple devices.
Reduction of Cost : Companies that use cloud computing do not incur the cost od start up. Unlike on-site hosting the price of deploying applications in the cloud can be less due to lower hardware costs.
Lets say there is a startup company which doesn't have any data center of it's own.
For such company , there are many costs to consider when they want to roll-out let's say new web site.
The major costs are:
Hardware : web servers , database servers, routers, firewalls.
Software : licensing costs for all softwares.
Manpower : People to maintain and configure the servers.
Even after the initial effort, if the number of user base starts growing, the company has to provision new hardware to serve new users.
On the other hand if company uses cloud solution, they can start with minimum expenses. They don't have to purchase new servers. No need to purchase routers or firewalls, and no need to configure them. There is no license to buy. There is no skilled manpower required to maintain the servers.
So all the initial cost in starting up the application is bypassed. You just need to pay for the usage of the application or site.
You can anytime scale up or scale down the server as per the users of your site increase or decrease.
You can also stop the site completely if not in use and not pay anything .
Up-to-date software's : A cloud provider will be responsible for upgrading the software and operating systems and apply patches as they released.
Flexibility : You can choose whatever software's you require, choose the RAM and disk space based on your requirements, and anytime scale them up or down, again based on the requirements.
However, large corporations are wary of cloud computing. There is a lack of trust between these corporations and storage providers. Even if some companies do trust their storage provider, they still have security concerns. Most big corporations are hesitant or unwilling to allow any of their sensitive data to be put in “the cloud.” There is always the possibility of hackers getting their hands on the data. In addition to that, users are not able to access the servers that have their stored data. Lastly, if the storage providers close up shop, it will be very hard to retrieve a company’s data.
Many businesses iirespective of thier size are using cloud computing today instead of traditional on-site alternatives. There are a number of reasons why cloud computing is so widely used among businesses today.
Access from anywhere : The biggest advantage of cloud is to provide access to your infrastructure, services, applications, data from anywhere in the world and that too 24/7. In a way this is a greater freedom for the users of cloud as they can access applications and data from just about anywhere via multiple devices.
Reduction of Cost : Companies that use cloud computing do not incur the cost od start up. Unlike on-site hosting the price of deploying applications in the cloud can be less due to lower hardware costs.
Lets say there is a startup company which doesn't have any data center of it's own.
For such company , there are many costs to consider when they want to roll-out let's say new web site.
The major costs are:
Hardware : web servers , database servers, routers, firewalls.
Software : licensing costs for all softwares.
Manpower : People to maintain and configure the servers.
Even after the initial effort, if the number of user base starts growing, the company has to provision new hardware to serve new users.
On the other hand if company uses cloud solution, they can start with minimum expenses. They don't have to purchase new servers. No need to purchase routers or firewalls, and no need to configure them. There is no license to buy. There is no skilled manpower required to maintain the servers.
So all the initial cost in starting up the application is bypassed. You just need to pay for the usage of the application or site.
You can anytime scale up or scale down the server as per the users of your site increase or decrease.
You can also stop the site completely if not in use and not pay anything .
Up-to-date software's : A cloud provider will be responsible for upgrading the software and operating systems and apply patches as they released.
Flexibility : You can choose whatever software's you require, choose the RAM and disk space based on your requirements, and anytime scale them up or down, again based on the requirements.
However, large corporations are wary of cloud computing. There is a lack of trust between these corporations and storage providers. Even if some companies do trust their storage provider, they still have security concerns. Most big corporations are hesitant or unwilling to allow any of their sensitive data to be put in “the cloud.” There is always the possibility of hackers getting their hands on the data. In addition to that, users are not able to access the servers that have their stored data. Lastly, if the storage providers close up shop, it will be very hard to retrieve a company’s data.
