IDG states that 70% of businesses surveyed said they at least have one application in the cloud. In the same survey, 56% need to identify which part of operations should be in the cloud. The transition itself is not to be downplayed. There is a lot to be done. For one, cloud hosting categories are offered to businesses depending on their needs. There are three services at the moment. PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) is where software and hardware are hosted for application development. On the other hand, IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) is the more stringent choice, where a 3rd party provider hosts software, middleware, and hardware on behalf of a user. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) as the most widely known, is where applications are hosted and made available for other businesses on the internet.
Scaling up to cloud hosting is a serious step in the web host industry, but if you think you are ready, consider choosing managed Cloud servers for your website. In addition to services, the type of environment, be it hybrid, private, or public are also the options that a company needs to evaluate for their current set-up and requirements. Most enterprises will opt for a private hosting, where everything is dedicated for their use alone, while SMBs will look at public and hybrid, where hosting is shared or a combination of the private and public respectively. Bottomline, it would still depend on the objectives and requirements.
It is not as easy no matter how beneficial cloud hosting is. So, while it seems like cloud is the recommended norm for the future of business, it also takes a major shift from a legacy mind set.
In Progress
Considering today’s business demands, it’s almost impossible to deny a migration to the cloud. However, this does not mean it should be done recklessly—meaning without careful and exhaustive planning. Still, it would help if you can identify the priorities so you can make a proper guideline for those involved in the project. To get you started, here are considerations that you need to think about.
- Financial assessment. Hardware costs aren’t a simple matter. It is one of the biggest expenses that companies purchase. This is why it is difficult to get approval for it. If you manage to identify current costs versus expected savings and ROI with cloud hosting, then it is a start. However, if you think you have the finances under control and future-proofed, then there is no hurry.
- Disaster recovery and business continuity feature. Every company should have a disaster recovery and business continuity plans. Cloud hosting is extremely good at this part. In a cloud environment, multiple cloud servers work on different tasks all at the same time, so when one server bogs down, the task is taken over by another server, and so on. What you can do is to measure the uptimes and downtimes on each environment and compare the performance and see where you need to fill the gaps with cloud migration. In general, business continuity is a mission critical operations issue, and with many cloud hosting vendors guaranteeing high percentages of uptime, this is more attainable than ever.
- Remote working is an option, but at a company’s discretion. Remember when Marissa Mayer recalled employees working from home back to the office? Well, IBM is following suit. While Mayer’s move might not have worked for Yahoo, the move to mobility is a company choice. Cloud hosting certainly fuels the telecommute culture but some companies prefer to create their own strategies around it.
- Confidence in the forecasts and plans. Nobody knows your business like you do. Not even cloud vendors can predict whether you grow or miss forecasts. If you have your operations well-planned out, then a change might disrupt it even more. If you think you cannot afford a disruption now, you can migrate at a more favourable time.
Whenever you’re ready
The cloud questions might not go away anytime soon, but that is fine. In truth, you don’t have to migrate all at once because you might stretch your bandwidth too soon. What is key is that you prepare leaving no doubts to mar your confidence in your operations. Get 3 months of Cloudways hosting free with this Cloudways promo code on Woblogger.
