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Cloud hosting is a type of web hosting which uses a network of servers all connected to each other to form a combined server resource. These connected servers are known as a ‘cloud’ or ‘cluster’. Through this ‘cloud’ a user can use al the resources that all the servers have to offer. Features such as memory, power, hard drives and processing speed are shared in cloud hosting. Resource usage is spread over many servers so if one server goes down it usually doesn’t affect users and so therefore cloud hosting often provides greater uptime than traditional web hosting. With cloud hosting shopping websites don’t need to fret over lost customers as a result of site downtime, as the remaining servers will keep a site running if one server stops working. Sometimes there is downtime if there is a problem in the server network and servers can’t communicate with each other, but generally the network is monitored often, with regular backups and security checks.

Within cloud hosting the cloud hosts measure how long various processing tasks take, and these measurements are referred to as compute cycles. These measurements help users to save money as the cloud host only bills them for the resources they have use or require. Through a cloud hosting plan the cloud hosts allocate a set resource amount to users and bill them according to the resource amount utilised. If users use more than their allocation they are billed per GB of bandwidth and data usage.

This means people can develop their websites and push traffic to them without having to worry whether the hosting package can handle the increased site data and traffic. Through being able to add or remove server resources as desired, cloud hosting offers great scalability to users.

This easy scalability offers to users better control of spending as well as the virtual environment. For instance a cloud host can back up and store a business database while the business maintains a separate dedicated server for their business application, or a business can test a new website via a cloud host, thereby ensuring the testing doesn’t affect the business’s separate dedicated server. Users don’t need to install hardware or download software as they can instead access it through one of the servers on the ‘cloud’. Cloud hosting permits different technologies to be utilised together which wouldn’t be allowed by traditional hosting so a UK cloud host for example become an even more viable option. For instance the ability for .php and .asp files to be utilised simultaneously through ‘cloud’ technologies offers enhanced flexibility for users.

Another benefit offered by a cloud host is that through outsourcing its IT infrastructure a company can free up physical space on its business premises. Companies would also require less in-house technical staff and have lower electricity bills. The cloud host takes care of upgrading the infrastructure, so companies can enjoy a high availability of resources without having to do the upgrading themselves.

Businesses are being told the saviour of technology is coming, computing is going to be cheaper and quicker than ever before and it’s all going to come in the form of a cloud. In fact there are many people out there who truly believe the concept of cloud computing is the best thing since sliced bread but if that’s the case you have to wonder why we’re not all on the cloud yet?

Cloud security is what’s got people so scare of placing all their computing completely on a cloud server. Cloud hosting providers are singing it’s praises and are all in a hurry to assure us it’s perfectly safe. Despite this whenever there’s any unexpected down time on a website it’s always put down to a data center error. Just before Christmas Amazon were down for a few hours on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. If one of the biggest cloud providers in the world can’t keep their servers up and running what hope is there for the rest of us? The truth is that placing all our data into a remote data center is actually very safe. You need to really think objectively about any stories you hear about hacked sites and server stacks falling over as there’s always another side of the story. All cloud providers will have to admit to being down from time to time it’s physically impossible to never have any problems. An average cloud provider will be down for about four to five hours every year but this still comes out at 99.95% up time which is what Amazon quote.

And the security itself is always going to be far more sophisticated than what you’ve got as their security is their reputation and any cloud provider with a bad reputation won’t be in business for long.

These days, be it personal or business related, social media now accounts for a large part of our lives. Matthew Trewhella, social media expert for Google, offers some great advice on the basicis of social media and how your business can benefit from it. He explains why cloud computing is so important, and it’s link with business continuity. Cloud computing can be termed to cover several different things. You will probably look at the subject slightly differently depending on whether you’re a consumer or business. The cloud is basically the internet, so it’s internet computing, Amazon, IBM, Google etc all have cloud computing services and use It collaboration. The big advantage with it is that you can scale your operation to any size, as you’re not hiring of buying physical hardware.. It’s great advantage is when your business expands and contracts. It means you can buy and sell storage and processing power, maximising your output and efficiency. As a consumer, the major benefit is that none of the data is stored on your computer. This means you can be safe in the knowledge that your data is more secure than it would be on your computer. The best part of this is that if your computer breaks, your data, applications etc are stored on large company servers, in a secure databank. This means all you need to do is get a new computer, get on the net and your back.. Google Docs is a good example. It allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, reports etc in an online environment. If your computer explodes it doesn’t matter, because the next time you get on the internet that document will still be there as it was stored on Google’s servers. It also has other benefits, collaboration wise. You can share documents and invite collaboration from others, so it has real advantages to your company around IT collaboration. Once real time editing is done, and your document is finished, you can easily publish it as a web page or share it via the network to other users.