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12.6.2011

If you have a small business, you know that in years past many of the ways to make operations more economical were just not practical for a business of your size. But the development of cloud computing, especially when it comes to a variety of cloud services such as virtual servers, means that many small and medium businesses can take advantage of new technologies without breaking the bank. The following article from PC World’s Business Center takes a look at a variety of points when discussing how a move to the cloud could be a smart one for many SMBs:

1. The Benefits for SMBs – There are many for a smaller business, including reducing overhead and software costs. Secure backup systems, long-distance collaboration, and reduced reliance on hardware upgrades are all explored here.
2. Asking the Right Questions – There are, of course, some concerns to moving to virtual servers in the cloud. The author looks at privacy, availability, data loss, and data mobility and ownership as causes for concern and how to address them with any potential cloud provider.
3. Cloud Transition Tips – Before the move to cloud computing, think about how to start small but think big, be sure your data can be transferred in its current format, read and understand agreements and always price out multiple options before deciding on a cloud service provider.

For more on what you need to consider on your way to cloud computing, be sure to read the full article at PCWorld.

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12.5.2011

Within the concept of Cloud Hosting, there are three different types of cloud hosting, each of them the right solution for different needs. The main difference between the three types of cloud hosting is how the infrastructure has been developed.

Public Cloud Hosting – With public cloud hosting, you are using another person’s infrastructure along with other customers. Your virtual servers are provisioned on their cloud infrastructure, and since the overall structure has a greater capacity than you need, you are able to tap into this larger capacity during short terms of sudden need. Security and compliance issues can sometimes be seen as a drawback, but for many this is a not as important an issue.

Private Cloud Hosting – The biggest difference between private and public cloud hosting is that with private cloud hosting when it comes to the physical resources of the system your data is hosted on, you are the only client. The environment is run on a hypervisor platform, but you are the only company that is running in the structure. A company gains the benefits of a hosted virtual solution coupled with the ability to preserve their dedicated and managed hardware and resources. For some types of businesses, the benefits in security, compliance and support outweigh the cost factors and make this a better solution.

Hybrid Cloud Hosting – In a hybrid cloud hosting situation, you get the best of both worlds. The hybrid cloud allows you to combine the scalability of virtualization with the high performance of dedicated hardware. For an application that has less need for hardware resources, this allows them to run in a dense virtual environment while at the same time allowing greater overall performance and hardware utilization for the database by removing the virtualization abstraction layer. A good example of this would be if your web and application servers were virtually hosted while your data servers ran on physical dedicated hardware with shared storage. For some business this makes the most sense, as it covers both needs without compromising on either.

As you can see, there are always more ways to approach the concept of Cloud Hosting. As the technology continues to evolve, we will see even more ways that this new concept continues to find applications that are perfect for any kind of Cloud Hosting.

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