Cloud computing solutions allow companies to utilize enterprise applications without the expense, time and hassle of purchasing new hardware and software. This allows businesses to move from operations to innovation quicker and gain an edge over competitors.
Servers can be expensive, and unless you invest in redundancy, like a redundant array with independent disks, there’s a high possibility that one of your servers may go down at any time. Moreover, the maintenance of servers and the space needed to set them up can increase quickly. Add to that the fact that servers require constant cooling, and you’ll be looking at a substantial operating cost.
You can access your applications and data wherever there is an internet connection. This allows your employees to perform more efficiently on the road, in the office, or on their mobile devices.
Cloud computing also permits rapid scaling of virtual resources and storage. It is easy to quickly add capacity to meet a sudden increase in demand, and scale back down just as quickly when things slow down. This is known as elasticity and is an important advantage of cloud.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google are the three most popular cloud providers. Other leading contenders are VMware and OpenStack. As the cloud continues to evolve we’re seeing more and more people embracing multi-cloud strategies. This is partly due to the possibility of vendor lock-in. But it’s also because there’s more flexibility in working with multiple providers.