What is
Cloud Hosting
As your website becomes more popular, or if you add new features such as audio, video, e-commerce, databases etc, you will soon find that you need more computing power to keep up with demand, or your site will become slow and unresponsive.
At this point you will need more than shared hosting where you share hosting resources with other customers. Until the introduction of Cloud Hosting, your only option would be to move to your own (‘dedicated’) server.
The problem with dedicated servers is that you pay for 100% of the server’s computing power, even if you only need 25% of it. Eventually you will probably need the whole server but until then you are wasting money.
This creates real dangers for your business. While you delay the decision to rent new servers because of the costs,
Server can have fewer resources (CPU, RAM, Storage) than a dedicated server and can therefore be much cheaper. And when your website need more computing power, your Cloud Server is simply given more to match your needs. We call this ‘Pay-as-you-Grow’.
There are times or periods in business where there is more demand, and times where there is less demand. With a Cloud Server you can increase and decrease your computing power to allow for this variation. So your customers are always happy with your fast website and you are not wasting money.
The benefits of Cloud Hosting are not limited to scaling easily and cost effectively. With shared hosting or dedicated servers, if there is a problem with the hardware or infrastructure, it can take engineers hours to fix. During this time you are loosing money and opportunity as your website is ‘down’.
Hosting is the ‘infrastructure’ on which your website or application is
physically located. Infrastructure includes both the computing power and
connectivity that your website needs to run and be available to the World.
What is Cloud Hosting
Understanding more about
Cloud Hosting benefits
Cloud Hosting is all about reducing the total cost of ownership for
high-availability hosting for your business IT infrastructure, websites,
applications, data storage and information systems.
The key areas of cost-reduction that are available to you with Cloud Hosting are:
• Pay-as-you-Grow: start with exactly the CPU, RAM and Storage resources that you actually need and increase incrementally as you grow. This way you only pay for what you need.
• Built-in high-availability: As well as Cloud-wide hardware auto-recovery (using stand-by spare servers), all servers, applications and data are automatically replicated in the Cloud and are made available in the case of any hardware failure so you loose less revenue and opportunities from downtime.
• One platform for product lifecycle: No need to migrate your application
infrastructure when you outgrow your current server capacity. Simply expand to use more server resources in the Cloud and reduce your application development and scaling costs.
• One platform, many applications: the more IT resources you can move to the Cloud, the more efficient your use of server resources and the lower your overall IT spending. The Clouds multi-platform support means that it need not be limited to hosting one type of application or system.
• Easier system management: centralized web-browser-based management of all hosted IT resources in the Cloud can simplify your application design, system administration workflow, human resource load and infrastructure management costs.
What about the
technicalities?
Cloud Hosting has emerged from developments in Virtualisation
technology, which is now widely accepted as being a far more
cost-effective method for deploying & managing IT resources than the
traditional hosted physical infrastructure approach.
The key technical advantages to Cloud Hosting & Virtualisation are:
• Application abstraction: application are ‘abstracted’ (or separated) from physical hardware and so become more mobile, scalable and versatile. Application
dependency on specific hardware has been removed and the ability to size your Cloud Server to the lowest required resources has eliminated under-utilisation of expensive hardware. Migrating applications between Clouds is a simple process meaning that even the physical location need not be a constant.
• Virtual Infrastructure: a large cost component of a hosted system is the network infrastructure required to connect your application components together and make them available to the outside world. With Cloud Hosting, physical infrastructure components (routers, switches, firewalls, load-balancers etc) are now virtualised, considerably reducing the capital expenditure required for expensive networking equipment.
• Application & Infrastructure ‘Encapsulation’: with Cloud Hosting, software developers, IT system integrators and Software-as-a-Service vendors are now able to rapidly Build, Deploy and Maintain their entire application, server and infrastructure stack as a unified Cloud Application with all the cost, scalability and versatility benefits that Cloud Hosting offers.
Making the move to
Cloud Hosting
Moving to a Cloud Hosting solution is an option available to the majority of
businesses with an IT hosting requirement. In some cases there is even an
opportunity to take advantage of hosting which would not otherwise have
existed before the emergence of Cloud Hosting technology.
DNS Europe specialises in Cloud hosting services and support and we offer a full-service approach to assisting our customers with the challenges surrounding adoption of Cloud Hosting technology. We can assist with strategy, planning, cost-analysis, migration and skills acquisition.
Our business consultants and solution designers are on hand to provide expert guidance as you integrate this once-in-a-decade technology evolution into your own business and establish real cost-savings and growth opportunities both within and through ‘the Cloud’. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss your specific requirements in more detail and invite you to contact us today to arrange for a free initial consultation.
Useful Information
DNS Europe Ltd.
Unit 4, Walpole Court Ealing Green
London W5 5ED United Kingdom
