This article focuses on the advantages that Cloud Hosting can offer you.
Scalable
Rackspace recently launched a press release shortly after the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference proudly boasting that the Apple web site that they host scaled up to 4.3 million page views in the space of a couple of hours without any downtime.
Whilst this is an extreme example, it shows how cloud hosting can cater for spikes in traffic that would otherwise render a dedicated server obsolete due to sheer volume of transactions.
No upfront costs
A new startup looking for the next big .com boom web site can leverage the same infrastructure that Amazon is using. The companies are on opposite ends of the turnover spectrum and vary drastically in size, but the competitive advantage that “the big boys” once had by having the spending power to purchase top of the range equipment has been thrown out the window. Jeremy’s book corner based in the welsh highlands can now leverage the same infrastructure as amazon.com – the world’s largest book supply store. Why? Because Jeremy only has to pay for what he uses, and he can pay afterwards, just like he does for his electricity.
Economies of scale
Immaturity in the technology and a very low take-up percentage has limited this advantage somewhat, however mathematical theory suggests that in the coming years the economies of scale sought from hosting in the cloud will mean clients will be asked to pay much less than what they do now. Cloud hosting is already cost effective for certain web sites, however the cost savings will become far more prominent moving forward.
No downtime
OK, well at least not much downtime. Amazon’s EC2 cloud recently got the good news when mother nature zapped one of its datacenters causing a fire. Whilst the cloud is good, it still can’t survive a lightning attack, and part of the network went down for a period for approximately 5 hours.
In the early days of, the clouds were up and down more than a yoyo, but now things have settled down and providers are willing to offer comprehensive Service Level Agreements to demonstrate their confidence that their cloud will be up at least 99.99% of the time.
Who gives a monkeys, I like to keep my hands clean…
Joe Bloggs has built an online shop and has no idea how successful it is going to be because it’s a new product that has never been launched before. Should he buy a shared hosting plan, or a dedicated server….Perhaps over Christmas he’ll need to load balance between two dedicated servers as people rush to buy his dancing reindeer toy. Joe should do none of the above, because he can host in the cloud and not care about the technical details of what’s happening in the background.
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