Figure out Cloud Hosting Solutions for Business work in 2021

Background to Cloud Hosting

Cloud Hosting Solutions for Business are increasing in popularity recently, so what is cloud hosting?.  The effects of the pandemic have accelerated changes that were taking place in the business environment anyway. The last couple of years has seen a sea change in the business environment.  Retail and hospitality have taken major pain because of a loss of business, particularly foot traffic, during lockdowns and travel restrictions.  What was a gradual move to remote working and online e-commerce became a stampede.  Working from home became the norm, and all indications are that it will remain a viable option for many organisations. What were development strategies morphed into survival strategies?  Businesses were required to re-tool and re-skill for an e-commerce environment while under severe financial pressure. One option that many have seriously considered and taken up is to outsource part or all of their existing IT or develop their new operations in the cloud.    

How does Business Cloud Hosting work?

 

Cloud Hosting Scenarios

One thing to remember is that normal business operations must continue during the transition.

With Cloud Hosting, there are two basic scenarios:

 

• The systems currently run in-house are outsourced to an MSP and transferred to their infrastructure, thereby offloading the daily bread and butter workload to the MSP. That will release staff to undertake new urgent tasks within the existing budget, such as developing the new e-commerce environment.  The downside is the capital expenditure for any new hardware and software needed, and hiring temporary or full-time staff to carry out the development.

 

• Create the new e-commerce focussed environment on the MSP infrastructure, and continue normal operations in-house. The advantage here is that all infrastructure costs devolve to the MSP, who will also be available to provide staff to assist with the development. These costs can be wrapped into the MSP monthly charge.

  Within the range of options available, running from Internet hosting to full outsourcing, Cloud Hosting solutions for business are proving popular with SMME and medium-sized businesses.    

What are the Cloud Hosting Solutions?

There are several  levels of Cloud Hosting:  

• Basic or Internet Hosting

   

• An ISP or MSP hosts the company websites and corporate email on the Internet. It’s also commonly used for simple e-commerce applications; Basic Hosting is cheap and cheerful but tends to be slow and limited in services.  They often are underpowered for adequate support of a full-on corporate environment.  In addition, if the corporate email server is hosted externally, the company loses all external and internal email and email-based collaborative work options like scheduling meetings if it loses its Internet connection for any reason.

 

• Shared Hosting at an MSP

 

• *     Shared hosting is using a server shared between you and other users of the same physical infrastructure.   The users share the running costs of the server.  This helps organizations need something a little larger and more responsive than Basic Hosting.

  Shared hosting can suffer from the problem of resource overcommitment by the MSP.  It may also be less secure because you are sharing the same virtual environment with other users.

• Virtual Private Server (“VPS”) Hosting at an MSP.

  *     The middle road, and similar to shared hosting.  VPS Hosting provides a full virtual server environment.  Each physical server hosts several VPS environments, sharing physical resources between each.  

VPS hosting

Services in the Cloud provide access to a network of virtual machines of potentially unlimited size. The size is limited by a reliance on interconnected physical machines that look to the user like one big VPS. A variant is dedicated VPS hosting where an organisation has sole use of a physical server.  

What is the Best Option for business?

  For many, cloud hoisting solutions for business are an ideal solution, providing a quick implementation of new online business systems.  However, moving existing business systems to the cloud infrastructure hosting the company website and email server does not usually provide sufficient power and flexibility.  Similarly, outsourcing the entire data centre infrastructure to a managed service provider (“MSP”) doesn’t make economic sense. In the middle lies Virtual Private Server (“VPS”), in which an MSP provides virtual servers on shared physical servers or a dedicated physical server.  The level of outsourcing depends on individual needs.  The outsourcing extent can range from renting self-managed space on a hosted infrastructure to full-service outsourcing of the entire infrastructure and its operation and management.    

The benefits of Moving to Cloud Hosting Solutions for the Business?

                  The benefits of adopting a cloud-based VPS hosting environment for business systems include:

? Speed

Moving to a cloud environment often needs to be done quickly, particularly if the organisation is under financial pressure.  An MSP can provide a pre-configured infrastructure with the appropriate physical and warm-body resources to have the new environment operational much more quickly.

? Cost Management

 

1. Fixed infrastructure costs and cost planning can be much more accurate. Typically, IT operational budgets vary over time, and it could be challenging to find additional resources to meet unexpected demands.   Simply put, Capex becomes Opex.
2. You only pay for what you need at the time you need it. Temporary resources are just that and do not need to be a permanent addition to the infrastructure or personnel.
3. Over time, VPS Hosting may be cheaper than existing operational costs.
4. Flexibility and scalability. If you need additional infrastructure resources, these are usually provided more quickly and economically with an MSP than by yourself.

   

Conclusion

Cloud-based hosting solutions using VPS shared server hosting is a quick and cost-effective way to address today’s challenges.   It is already increasing in popularity and will continue to do so in 2021 and on into 2022.   Enjoy the offered range of Cloud Hosting. To discuss how can help you, please either:

• Choose one of our offerings by contacting our sales
• Visit https://hostsailor.com/contact/ for other contact details.