In our previous article, 5 things SME’s gain from leveraging the cloud, we talk about key benefits to be gained from moving to a cloud-based platform such as resiliency, digital transformation, automation, improved productivity, predictive costs, and high availability. In this article, we focus on agile and scalable cloud hosting and how it’s essential for any business wanting to move with the ebb and flow of the uncertain world we live in today.
Agility and Scalability in business are all about being able to respond to change and react quickly to business demand. But what does it mean when we refer to cloud hosting?
What is agile and scalable cloud hosting?
In terms of cloud hosting services, having an agile and scalable solution means that it’s easy to allocate and deallocate resources quickly. Cloud offers the ability to increase/decrease resources for any given workload. Additional resources can be added to service a workload (horizontal scaling) or add additional capabilities to manage increased demand to existing resources (vertical scaling).
Why is agility & scalability important when choosing cloud hosting?
Adapting to growth and the ability to move quickly gives a competitive advantage over less agile competitors. Technology advances so fast, along with consumer demand and expectations, so having an agile and scalable IT structure is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.
Some key benefits are:
- REACTIVITY – A well-supported cloud hosting solution is reactive to change.
- FLEXIBLE – The cloud is very flexible when it comes to the resourcing aspect. There is an ability to allocate and deallocate resources in a simple process. Sudden changes are easily reacted to and the system can easily be reconfigured and reorganised. This could be with spikes in demand or a reduced requirement. Cloud providers make it easy to scale the application, and it offers the ability to scale automatically based usage patterns.
- NEW OPPORTUNITIES – The agility and scalability of the cloud also helps to test out new solutions and products quickly to see if they work, enabling the ability to be receptive to market changes.
- PREDICTABLE COSTS – Shared storage can at times be unpredictable and hard to determine, which means a system that takes out this unpredictability is ideal. With the cloud, the growth does not have to be pre-determined.
- NO PERFORMANCE DIP – The cloud’s capabilities mean that the increases do not affect the performance of the cloud and its ability to perform as it should.
- RESPONSIVE – As a business needs change and grow, the cloud provider can respond quickly.
- COST SAVING – Businesses can also evade the upfront costs of expensive equipment that could become outdated or even obsolete after a few years.
- RECOVERY – With an agile and scalable cloud system, there is no requirement to build and maintain secondary data centres.
Scaling
A sudden increase in demand or a higher workload is easily catered for with the cloud. Additional resources can be added to service a workload which is known as horizontal scaling (often referred to as scaling out).
Additional capabilities can also be added to manage increased demand to existing resources; vertical scaling (often referred to as scaling up).
When scaling out, additional VMs (Virtual Machines) can be added to the application. Each VM is identical to other VMs servicing the application. Scaling out provides additional resources to handle the additional load.
When scaling up, businesses move to a new VM with additional resources. For example, it may be determined that a more powerful CPU is needed and more memory for the application. In that case, scaling up will allows businesses to move their application to a more powerful VM.
Scaling up not only adds more CPU power and memory, but results in additional features due to the added power. For example, scaling up might provide solid-state disk drives or other features not available at lower tiers. In addition to scaling out and scaling up, businesses can also scale in and scale down to decrease resource usage. In a real-world situation, businesses would want to increase computing resources when needed, reducing them when demand goes down.
How to choose the right Cloud hosting solution for SMEs?
There are many options for cloud hosting, and not all are built the same. At HAYNE Solutions, we deliver HAYNE.cloud – a managed cloud hosting solution powered by Microsoft Azure. We chose Microsoft Azure as it’s a truly powerful hosting service, providing real scalability and agility. Together with our Gold Microsoft Provider status and partnership approach to working with businesses, HAYNE.cloud is perfect for growing SME’s looking for a safe, secure, hassle-free managed cloud hosting service.
Discover HAYNE.cloud
Powered by the global Microsoft Azure platform, and supported by the HAYNE team, HAYNE.cloud delivers a whole range of cloud services from cloud hosting, migration, management, maintenance, and optimisation services.
We are an extension of your IT team, your managed cloud services partner – working with you to help you navigate the cloud to maximise your technology, software, and platform investments. We keep your business-critical cloud infrastructure safe, secure, and running efficiently, leaving you with the time to focus on business growth.