Cloud hosting makes applications and websites accessible using cloud resources. Unlike traditional hosting, solutions are not deployed on a single server. Instead, a network of connected virtual and physical cloud servers hosts the application or website, ensuring greater flexibility and scalability.
What Is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing is the delivery of different services through the Internet. These resources include tools and applications like data storage, servers, databases, networking, and software.
Cloud computing is a popular option for people and businesses for a number of reasons including cost savings, increased productivity, speed and efficiency, performance, and security.
The cloud provider oversees the setup, cloud infrastructure, security and maintenance, while sometimes allowing clients to customize hardware and applications and scale servers online. Compute and storage resources are spread out across hundreds of virtual machines (VMs) that load balance I/O demands in a cloud infrastructure configuration.
Key features:
- Applications and solutions are deployed on a cloud network rather than an on-premises, single server.
- Resources scale to user needs.
- Organizations only pay for the resources they use.
- Cloud hosting can support SQL (including MySQL) or NoSQL databases.
- Solutions are automated and controlled using APIs, web portals, and mobile apps.
Is Cloud Computing Safe?
Because software and data are stored remotely in cloud computing, data security and platform security are a big concern. Cloud security refers to the measures undertaken to protect digital assets and data stored on cloud-based services. Measures to protect this data include two-factor authorization (2FA), the use of VPNs, security tokens, data encryption, and firewall services, among others.
Cloud hosting benefits
Cloud hosting provides significant capital and operational savings to organizations because they don’t have to spend a lot on the initial upfront capital cost associated with owning and managing data centers. IT also has the ability to scale more efficiently, using and paying only for the resources they need. In addition, long-term data retention becomes a more simplified process, eliminating the costly management of disks and tape systems.
Types of Cloud Services
Regardless of the kind of service, cloud computing services provide users with a series of functions including:
- Storage, backup, and data retrieval
- Creating and testing apps
- Analyzing data
- Audio and video streaming
- Delivering software on demand
Cloud computing is still a fairly new service but is being used by a number of different organizations from big corporations to small businesses, nonprofits to government agencies, and even individual consumers.