The Economics of Cloud Hosting
December 29, 2011
One of the primary reasons a company might turn to cloud hosting is the perception that it will save money. With rising energy costs, the demands for faster and more powerful hardware, and the cost of maintaining in-house servers, cloud computing seems like an economical choice. That perception may or may not be reality, and that largely depends on the business.
Over the course of five years, you may spend several thousand dollars on new server hardware and also have to pay for power and bandwidth. Still, you could conceivably end up paying more over the course of five years, even with low fees from a cloud hosting provider. That may make you wonder why so many people are moving to the cloud to save money…
This is why your company’s standing or your individual circumstance can determine whether or not you move to the cloud. For example, if you run a small business or even run a web business all by yourself, it may not be feasible for you to pay thousands of dollars for server space, the hardware itself, and the bandwidth to connect it. That may leave you with the only option of finding some type of co-location or lease deal, and even then you will still have to manage it yourself or pay for managed hosting.
In the above scenario, cloud hosting will not only save you money; it may be your only viable choice when you need a remotely hosted platform that is ready to go, out of the box. If all you need is an un-managed server with only basic support, you would probably not be reading this article. The cloud is ideal for those who either have no desire or cannot afford to maintain big hardware and complex software. For those people, the savings are incalculable.