Today it is difficult to imagine a world without cloud computing. You might think cloud computing is only about some complex systems for big business, but in fact, you use it every day even in your smartphone. Cloud computing is a natural way of business development. Actually, cloud computing is useful almost in any areas but today we’ll talk about the IT sector.
IT business develops very fast. A few years ago any company needed to buy servers in-house. This is quite an expensive and complicated process. If you need just one server, you need to buy three. The first one you need for your software and data, the second for backups and the third one for connection between the first two and the load balancing. Cloud computing allows you to get access to servers and other hardware or software in a much simpler way.
Benefits of cloud computing
We’ll describe below what you can get with implementing cloud computing.
- Cost-reduction. An example with servers is very exponential. If you need more capacity, you should buy more and more servers. Also, servers need special temperature in the room, so you’ll need to buy climate control equipment and powerful water cooling systems too. In the cloud, you can just use more resources and pay for what you use without buying or renting servers and other equipment.
- Scalability. Cloud computing allows you to receive as many resources as you need at any time. For example, you need more bandwidth at night and less in the morning. With the physical server, you need to buy a new server whenever you need more capacity and after that, you’ll pay for the server maintenance. With cloud computing, you’ll use the necessary resources when you need and pay only for the resources you use without overpayment.
- Security and disaster recovery. Data in the cloud is stored in the encrypted form, so it is almost impossible to steal and use it. Also, you might efficiently store backups in the cloud without risks.
- Competitiveness. Cost-reduction allows you to save money for other company’s needs. Scalability significantly increases the efficiency of your operations a result, your business competitiveness will increase too.
There are a lot of benefits, we listed only the common. With cloud computing, you’ll have access to the newest infrastructures and environments for your business.
What kinds of cloud exist?
There are four basic models of cloud computing you might use. Let’s get acquainted with them.
- Public cloud. This cloud gives you access to the resources on the cloud provider side. You might use servers, virtual machines, different software and virtual environments.
- Private cloud. This is a part of the public cloud deployed just for your company. This is a very convenient approach for storing sensitive data.
- Hybrid cloud. This model means a combination of private and public clouds. In this case, you might store sensitive data in the private cloud and other data and software in the public part.
- Multicloud. In some way, this is a complicated version of a hybrid cloud. Multicloud is based on different cloud providers. You can store some part of your data on one cloud platform and some on another. There are three of the most popular cloud platforms: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure. So, for example, you might store sensitive data on the GCP and use some tools from AWS simultaneously. This is not the most efficient way but sometimes it’s the optimal one. Often this approach is used for legacy systems that can’t be moved to one cloud entirely.
To make the right choice about the cloud model and cloud provider you should ask for help from an experienced specialist or refer to the company that provides cloud computing services.
How to choose a Managed Cloud Service Provider?
Managed Service Provider or MSP is a company with wide experience in cloud migration and cloud setup. There are a lot of MSP companies and it’s important to choose right. Reliable MSP will provide you with qualified cloud migration. It is important to distinguish cloud provider and MSP. The first provides you with cloud services. Cloud provider is AWS, for example. The second provides you with cloud migration, service customization, designing and redesigning infrastructure and more. With a cloud provider, you can just rent resources, while MSP will choose the best strategy for your company, choose cloud provider for your needs and will lead you from your on-prem system to total moving to the cloud.
To choose an experienced MSP you should pay attention to ratings like Clutch and others, read reviews from previous customers and, of course, talk to MSP and describe your needs, ask questions, etc.
Reliable MSP is the key to benefits from cloud services for your business.
