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You may be aware of the increasing popularity of cloud database hosting services in 2015, but have you paused to consider why it’s important in your web design? It’s not an exaggeration to say that cloud computing is the next phase of the evolution of the Internet. It’s now past the early adoption phase and clouds are being used by all sizes of enterprises.
Before discussing why you should use cloud services for your business, let’s take a quick look at how clouds work.
Types of Clouds
- How Important Is The Cloud For Your Business?
Cloud computing primarily consists of private clouds, public clouds, and hybrid clouds. (While there are other types of clouds, like, say, community clouds, these three types of clouds form the majority.)
Online tech define a private cloud as “a single-tenant environment where the hardware, storage and network are dedicated to a single client or company” and a public cloud as “generally used for web servers or development systems where security and compliance requirements of larger organizations and their customers is not an issue.”
Since both types of clouds offer benefits, almost 75% of enterprises pursue a hybrid cloud strategy. This is one where there are two or more clouds, some private and some public.
What Do Clouds Do?
The real benefits of cloud computing, however, can be understood by looking at it from the perspective of the services it offers:
Here is a brief description of different types of service models to give you a clear idea of how clouds work and why they are preempting legacy solutions:
1. Packaged Software.
In legacy services, an organization manages its own application, data, runtime, middleware, operating system, virtualization, servers, storage, and networking. This is very expensive and requires a dedicated IT staff.
2. Infrastructure (as a Service).
In this model, an organization manages its applications, data, runtime, middleware, and operating system while vendors manage virtualization, servers, storage, and networking.
3. Platform (as a Service).
In this model, an organization manages its applications and data, while vendors manage runtime, middleware, and operating system virtualization, servers, storage, and networking.
4. Software (as a Service).
In this model, an organization merely accesses the cloud, while vendors manage its applications, data, runtime, middleware, and operating system virtualization, servers, storage, and networking. Compare this to the packaged service where a company was responsible for everything, which was costly and labor-intensive.
5 Reasons to Adopt a Cloud
Now that you understand how clouds work and the various platforms involved, let’s consider what IT solutions your business may require from a cloud service provider.
First, using a cloud provides you with tremendous freedom from the responsibility of managing your own hardware, software, and IT staff. Naturally, you will also slash costs. While business leaders may initially feel a sense of trepidation when thinking of moving all their services to a cloud provider and relinquishing control of running their own technological infrastructure, this is actually an irrational fear because cloud providers can do more to protect the security of data than an individual company is willing to spend on it. In return for their trust, cloud providers offer organizations the benefit of economies of scale. Organizations save on hardware and software costs, as well as server management costs. They get back the time, money, and labor that they would have spent on an IT system.
Second, by using the cloud you are freed from the tangle of devices that you need to access data and software. Business owners no longer need to disaster proof their business in case of natural disasters because their data is barracked in safe headquarters in the cloud providers’ multimillion dollar plants. Employees, too, can access the cloud from any device at anytime from anywhere on the planet that has Internet access.
Third, it makes it much easier to work with remote employees or freelancers. These remote workers can do everything that previously needed an office environment, and they can easily access company projects and use proprietary company software to do their work. In addition, even small companies that use SaaS can now benefit from top-shelf software because it is based on a rental model. Previously, enterprise-level software was too expensive to purchase for small companies. This means that as a web designer, you can use the premier tools for your industry to develop some outstanding websites.
Clouds in 2015 are better than any negative reports you may have heard about them in earlier years. In its early years, clouds, like any new technology, had its hiccups. It was expensive to get bandwidth, and Over the top (OTT) quality was not always there. In its early years, SMBs considered earlier telephony methods cheaper, easier, and more reliable to use, but now after years of trial and error, innovation has finally made clouds the premier technology on the Internet, and the web’s best hope in handling the problems associated with big data.
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