Cloud computing and its impact on your business
The term ‘Cloud Computing’ is one of the buzzwords with the most echo in the technological expansion of recent times. Deliberately or accidentally, you come across cloud storage and cloud computing in everyday life, as long as you are active in online e-commerce domain.
To be more specific, most of the people use various features of online video calls like Skype or they can regularly access emails for business transactions and also for personal use through Gmail or Yahoo! Here, you access data or resources that are in a cloud storage environment.
What is cloud computing?
In simple terms, cloud computing involves the delivery of hosted services such as computing resources or data storage capacity over the Internet. The end user only needs to have a computer and high-speed Internet access to connect to the cloud where services and resources are shared.
Cloud computing, which has paved the way to introduce a paradigm shift in the IT field, is now widely used in many fields, such as web-based software services, on-demand games, platform as a service, etc. The cloud computing environment is very flexible as the applications or services are platform independent and also the storage location will be in the cloud, eliminating the need to allocate specific hardware to a task.
These services are mainly delivered in three forms such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). In IaaS, in the end, users pay for resources like servers and other infrastructure for a period of time. In PaaS, the platform or system software is accessed from the cloud, while in SaaS, the cloud service provider provides the application software and databases.
How does a cloud help your online business?
The developments in the domain of cloud computing and also the interest in this service is on the way of rapid growth as it is used by small and large companies on a large scale. Unlike traditional web hosting services, the cloud service is sold on demand and can be treated as a subscription. This is very useful for SMEs (small and medium-sized businesses) that cannot afford to purchase a large amount of storage space and hardware resources.
The cloud provider provides the services and resources according to the demand of the users. It’s also very easy and fast to use, as SaaS in cloud computing eliminates the need to install software on your hardware. You can save a lot of money as the cloud provides scalability, allowing you to scale up or down, using cloud resources or data, depending on your needs. It also requires less staff as hardware, software and maintenance tasks are minimal.
Therefore, these services look promising from all perspectives, whether for a large company or a small online business.