Cloud Hosting – Is It The Right Choice For Your Organization
Cloud Hosting – Is It The Right Choice For Your Organization?
Cloud hosting technology is the buzzword now! The term ‘Cloud Technology’ has certainly become extremely popular and has gained world-wide importance, and rightly so. It is a new technology with amazing usage advantages. It offers huge cost effectiveness to the businesses around the world which is facing growing global economic crisis conditions.
The rising inflation is causing great depressions and agony everywhere. The rising costs are cutting not just profits of the businesses but many are facing extinction, especially the small businesses around the world are instate of shutting down or will shut down within the next few years. In such torrid times, the cost-effectiveness, savings, and opportunity to use third-party hardware, software, and applications can mean life-saving to these and other businesses.
Cloud technology is also perhaps the most innovative technology that will make tasks like online shopping, education, telecommuting, infrastructural cost cuttings, entertainment, telecommunications, and just about everyday living much better. Information will be on the fingertips literally as the desktop, laptops, and mobile gadgets will be able use the Cloud technology in a superior, innovative, and economical way. Online businesses would benefit largely because they would not need to purchase hardware and software anymore.
All the equipment these online businesses need will be provided by ‘Cloud hosting services’ which will use these services in innovative ways and at reduced prices because they themselves will be benefiting greatly from this technology offering them global markets. The businesses would not have to pay fixed prices to use the conventional web hosting service charges because all these services will be available to them on pay-per-use basis. That means now they do not have to pay full charges even when they use the conventional web hosting sparingly.
The online businesses will have better control any in situations of disasters – their websites can be quickly shifted to another virtual server instantaneously in case one node of virtual web server cluster fails. These businesses can easily scale – up or downside — their website’s requirements easily and rapidly whenever such scaling is required. The connectivity will be much faster and secure than the existing ones.
In short, by using the Cloud hosting technology, online businesses will experience highest form of scalability, flexibility, stability, security, connectivity, and affordability – among many other huge advantages to run their business effectively. They can now look not just to save operational and capital expenditure but they can also look forward to expand their online business to all parts of the world and make great amounts of profit!
So is it the right time to move your existing business websites to the “Cloud”?
You most certainly should use the Cloud hosting technology if the above conditions apply to your business – and only if the following conditions are not the concern faced by your existing business! Some of these concerns when you should not move your business on the “Cloud” yet are:
#1 – HIPAA, PCI / PCI DSS, and SOX — Rules and Regulatory Compliance
These three regulations immediately come to the mind as the major hurdles for businesses coming under those directives and protocols. There will certainly be a lot more of such serious-natured legal regulations. The businesses falling under these regulatory compliance constraints also have major security issues to handle. They deal with the personal identity information, health care data records, credit card and other such data security related issues, storage of such important privacy information related guidelines, share-holders related document storage and such legal requirements, and other equally serious issues will stop any business associated directly with these regulations should not use the Cloud technology – at least not at present. There can be major legal and compliance related issues involved in deploying such a business to the Cloud hosting technology system.
#2 – Are there really any benefits for my business?
Use the existing setup if moving to the Cloud is not going to offer any major benefits! Many businesses are well set up and are doing their businesses effectively. Their websites, databases, and other related components are designed and created to use the conventional web hosting environment. Moving their well set business to the newer Cloud hosting technology can mean doing a lot of changes to their websites and the back-end programs. Not only these changes will have to be done, but all these changes will have to be tested, analyzed, and implemented thoroughly. It may mean additional costs and a time-lag, and most certainly it would mean major all-around planning phase for the business. Hiring experts in the field will involve additional financial burden. May be, it would not be so prudent to move the prospering online business to the “Cloud technology” just yet!
#3 – Will you feel really comfortable with keeping your database on an unknown web server?
If your business cannot let other third-party web servers to store your sensitive data for security related issues, then you should use the existing set up to run your online business.
# 4 – How security will be the data?
If you doubt that the data encryption procedures created, managed, or used at all stages, including during the data transfer stages are not adequately controlled by the Cloud web hosting service and other concerned authorities which may endanger your business then moving your business to Cloud hosting can wait for a longer time!
#5 – Cloud technology – Is everything well under control?
How much control you or your Cloud web hosting provider will have over the Cloud infrastructure? For example, you would like to have the important business related database be setup only on your own web server for security reasons. In case of Cloud hosting technology, will the database sit only on the web server that would want to like in existing conventional dedicated or collocated web hosting case? There can be many such issues which needs better solutions and until proper established solutions to all such issues are formed, any business should be concerned about the issues concerning Cloud deployment.
In conclusion, Cloud hosting technology is a very powerful technology that is still in its infancy. There still are many rules regulations and compliance related issues which the businesses should first handle carefully so that there would not be any problems later.
Every aspect of your business must be properly analyzed before moving it to the Cloud hosting technology which no doubt has a great future in terms of cost-effectiveness, better manageability, scalability, capacity on-demand, and other future development of more powerful features which will enable everyone to use the huge power that this exciting and innovative web technology offers and other such benefits. So until all these concerns are taken care of and proper regulations for such businesses come into existence, it would be wise to keep using the conventional form of web hosting.
