Cloud hosting | Cloud application hosting for small Business
Small Business are working in a very competitive environment wherein they have to compete with the large enterprises having access to the latest technology as well as the financial strength to invest upfront cost involved. Cloud computing technologies have narrowed the gap between small and big enterprises as far as technology access is concerned.
So what basically is cloud computing? Cloud computing essentially is convergence of the concept of Software as a service (SAAS) and Platform as a service where in the application and network used by the business is hosted by a third party servers and offered as a service. There is difference between managed services and cloud platforms as well. While managed services essentially involves both onsite and offsite components, cloud computing is offered as remote services only.
Clouds computing characteristics are:
• On-demand access: you can access the applications anytime from anywhere
• Broad network access: a form of sharing by multiple users
• Resource pooling: network resources works in parallel and scattered in various places for faster processing
• Fast deployment: Assets deployed at short notice
Small business gains from cloud hosting:
• Application hosting helps small business to reduce the IT infrastructure costs to manageable minimum, where in they have to pay only monthly costs to access the services.
• More time to focus on your business: with IT support being provided round the clock by third party ASP, the business can focus more on their core areas.
• Access Application on the go: With cloud hosting services all the IT infrastructure, in a sense moves with you. Example: By going for QuickBooks hosting, you can access the application from any place anytime.
• Security: due to centralization of data, security of data is more comprehensive and proactive.
Cloud hosting | Cloud application hosting for small Business
Cloud computing describes computation, software, data access, and storage services that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services. Parallels to this concept can be drawn with the electricity grid where end-users consume power resources without any necessary understanding of the component devices in the grid required to provide said service.
Cloud computing is a natural evolution of the widespread adoption of virtualization, service-oriented architecture, autonomic and utility computing. Details are abstracted from end-users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.
Cloud computing describes a new supplement, consumption, and delivery model for IT services based on Internet protocols, and it typically involves provisioning of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources.It is a byproduct and consequence of the ease-of-access to remote computing sites provided by the Internet. This frequently takes the form of web-based tools or applications that users can access and use through a web browser as if it were a program installed locally on their own computer.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides a somewhat more objective and specific definition:
Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
The term "cloud" is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online that are accessed from another Web service or software like a Web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers.
Most cloud computing infrastructures consist of services delivered through common centers and built on servers. Clouds often appear as single points of access for consumers' computing needs. Commercial offerings are generally expected to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements of customers, and typically include service level agreements (SLAs).
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Cloud Hosting Benefits for Small Business
Thanks for the great information.
I would like to add few more benefits of cloud hosting such as easy & secure collaboration with the clients, reduce the risk by backing-up the data off-site and also improves the efficiency by providing the automatic updates.
For more features of cloud hosting benefits, you can check this Infographic.
https://www.acecloudhosting.com/blog/10-benefits-of-cloud-computing-for-smbs/