In recent years, cloud infrastructure has become one of the most essential parts of modern businesses. Cloud services have grown from a relatively niche area of IT, to become a mainstream business solution. While companies large and small once stored their data on owned and operated hardware, the trend has now shifted so that businesses rely on data centers and decentralized server networks for their data storage and computational tasks. There’s no sign that cloud adoption is slowing down.
The largest cloud service providers are growing exponentially. Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Services division generates more than 22% of the company’s total revenue, beating Windows and other Server Products. Amazon, the world’s largest cloud service provider, generates 16% of its total revenue from AWS Cloud.
Why are companies from small businesses to large enterprises investing so heavily in the cloud, and what does this mean for your own business?
What is the Cloud?
The cloud is often thrown around as a buzzword and this can make it difficult to grasp as a concept. The most important thing to recognize about the cloud is that it simply refers to remote servers rather than on-site servers. The remote servers sit in data centers around the world.
These servers can store, manage, and process data, taking the load and technical requirements away from businesses. Specialist companies own and manage data centers to deliver cloud services, so enterprises and all kinds of businesses can worry less about technology and focus on what they’re best at.
With the cloud, you won’t have to invest in your own hardware and can enjoy access to a wide range of resources including databases, storage, software, and high processing power.
Flexibility and Scalability are Important
One of the key reasons for enterprises moving to the cloud is that there is enhanced flexibility and scalability. Consider a traditional scenario with on-site servers. All of the scalability would have to come from deployed physical hardware, which could become prohibitively expensive as needs evolved. With remote servers, the best providers offer scalability solutions on-demand, so it’s easy to transition a website, data, apps, and other services to a more powerful solution without the need to reconfigure or purchase new equipment. And, it’s done with no or minimal downtime.
Cloud infrastructure provides the freedom to adjust resources based on demand, which is ultimately more cost-efficient, and less intensive because there’s no need to manage on-site hardware. This is all done by the provider through software and at the data center.
The Pandemic Changed the Way Businesses Look at Hardware
The Covid 1-9 Pandemic had a huge impact on cloud adoption. As workforces decentralized, the need for on-site hardware was largely diminished.
With people telecommuting and working from home, it made more sense to have reliable cloud services to share data, use web applications, and perform other business tasks. Cloud infrastructure is what made it possible for millions of people around the world to work from any location.
Even as the Pandemic tapers downwards, the work-from-home trend has continued. This means that enterprises still have a high demand for cloud services like remote servers and backup.
Some companies would have been able to manage work from home during the Pandemic using their own hardware, but this would have been costlier and the overhead for maintaining the physical hardware is hard to justify in today’s economy.
Most of all, the Pandemic proved that businesses need to be agile and able to adapt to random unforeseen scenarios. Remote servers and the cloud inherently provide support for this.
Even today, no matter the size of your business, you’ll enjoy better flexibility, scalability, adaptability, and recovery when choosing cloud solutions. Take for example the cloud backup solutions offered by HostRound, where you can recover your server’s data from anywhere in the world, even after a breach, accidental data loss, or another unforeseen event.
There are Better Insights Available from the Cloud
Remote servers can offer better insights from the data that they collect. When businesses operate their own servers, they need to be certain that they have the analytics and reporting tools set up to make sense of all the data being collected. Cloud service providers have analytics tools built into the platform so data can be collected and interpreted as soon as it’s recorded.
Gathering insights from the data reported on a server can lead to better-informed business decisions.
Security Enhancements
Securing data has become an industry in itself and most organizations, even large enterprises, lack the expertise to properly implement and manage security solutions. The cloud is more secure than traditional data storage. Multiple layers of security can be implemented, even when looking at something fairly simple like a website server. Everything from encryption to identity and access management can be configured. Regular patches and security updates are much easier to deploy over the cloud.
Businesses can have the latest security features without any additional cost or effort when choosing a reliable hosting and cloud services provider.
Everyone Can Take a Lesson from Large Enterprises
Of course, you don’t need to run a large enterprise to enjoy the benefits of the cloud. From WordPress hosting to custom server hosting, businesses of all sizes and backgrounds can leverage the best cloud technology when choosing the right hosting provider.
HostRound offers a range of services based on fundamental and advanced cloud technologies. Talk to us today if you want to learn more about how our remote solutions can enhance your business.