The Secret to Cloud Success: Own Your Own Infrastructure

Searching for Cloud Success

If you’re new to the topic of cloud computing, don’t worry — it’s simpler than it may seem! Think of the way a traditional web server works — individual machines, real or virtual, are manually set up and configured by systems administrators. If a business needs more or fewer resources, administrators must manually create or deactivate systems.

Cloud computing just helps automate some, or all, of this process. At a lower level, cloud server software simply helps automate many basic system administration tasks, giving the end-user more control. Cloud computing automates the creation and termination of servers in response to visitors and needed memory, letting sites and apps automatically respond to traffic and demand.

Features of Cloud Infrastructure

Here are some features of cloud infrastructure that make it a popular choice:

Initial Cost Savings — Since the business is not responsible for the initial server setup costs, a business requires reduced technical expenditure and can do more with fewer technicians. This leads to both early and ongoing reduced cloud costs.

Infrastructure as a Service — Many cloud platforms have built-in tools to make common app and site design tasks easier and more efficient. This reduces server load for the cloud provider and saves money for customers that pay based on resource usage.

Flexibility and Scalability — Because cloud servers can be configured to automatically scale up and down based on traffic and processing requirements, businesses only pay for what they use. This keeps costs low in the beginning while letting you seamlessly add to your capabilities as needed — even with seasonal demand.

Some Issues With Public Cloud Servers

In the rush to upgrade to the cloud, many businesses ran into some unexpected problems. Many cloud providers offer public cloud services. Much like shared servers, public cloud services mean that you are sharing servers with other users. This leads to a series of issues:

Painful Pricing Models — Many pricing plans that seemed fairly priced for infrequent usage become incredibly costly at higher levels of usage. By the time you’re using enough resources to find yourself in this situation, though, it would be even more costly to relocate or reconfigure.

Standardized and Unconfigurable — Public cloud servers are optimized for the cloud provider’s benefit. If a configuration is not already available in the presets, you’re going to find it difficult to impossible to get the settings you need. This is true of the hardware as well.

Security and Privacy Risks — Sharing servers with other customers can be a security issue depending on your business and data.

Outages are Significant — If you keep an eye on technology news, you’ll notice that every couple of months a hiccup at a major cloud provider leads to hundreds of high-traffic websites completely shutting down. You can find your service down at the worst possible time, with nothing to do but wait for the provider’s team to resolve everyone’s issues.