Maintaining their own data centers does not make any more sense for businesses these days than maintaining, say their own power stations. Of course, maintaining one’s own power station can provide some advantages on power supply front, but the ensuing distraction and costs makes it rarely worthwhile. In these days of cloud computing, similar considerations are beginning to apply for maintaining one’s own full-fledged IT infrastructure.
Under a cloud computing environment, practically all the IT infrastructure can be hired, typically on a pay-per-use basis. You can hire servers, application software, storage space and even backup/recovery services. The only critical requirement is dependable connectivity, which is typically not a problem for businesses in these days of widespread availability of broadband.
Access to your data is possible in several ways. You can access them from inexpensive Desktops and Laptops, mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, and public Internet kiosks (so long as you attend to essential security precautions).
Under this environment, you are freed of the huge responsibility of maintaining a data center with all the incidental outlays and headaches - servers, climate control, access control, dependable power supply, skilled administrators and maintenance staff, and so on. You also don’t have to upgrade to the latest versions of hardware and software every time these come out. And you don’t have to worry about the attrition and consequent replacement of expensive and hard to find staff.
Above all, you don’t have to wait months before new systems and trained personnel are in place. In a cloud computing scenario, you can typically deploy everything in a day or less once you have signed the agreement with the service provider.
Cloud computing service providers typically employ the latest hardware and software, and keep these updated as new versions come into the market. You automatically get to use the power, such as redundant and failover capabilities, of these latest offerings. While the redundant capabilities take care of any loss of primary data and applications, the failover capabilities ensure that any anticipated system failures are guarded against.
In the type of environment described above, businesses can focus on their business instead of being constantly distracted by incidentals that require full-time departments and major resource outlays.
For more information please visit the authors website.Shared Cloud Hosting and Managed Services