By now, you may have already heard the words cloud, cloud hosting, and cloud computing. ‘Cloud’ is a buzzword used to describea certain kind of application or service offering that operates via the internet. Cloud computing refers tosoftware like iTunes, GoogleDocs, Dropbox etc. that you access, manage, or run through a browser. Cloud management is the machinery behind cloud computing – itis what keeps your site up and running. This is doneby spreading data resources across many physical servers, reducing your website’s reliance on a single piece of hardware.
For business owners who have long used traditional servers without encountering issues, switching to the cloud may sound like taking an unnecessary risk. The word ‘cloud’, with its associated images of floating, fluffyentities, devoid of human control, does little to actually instill a sense of security. But in reality, most of these perceivedissuesare groundless. Just like every revolutionary technology, cloud computing is associated with a range of misconceptions. Here are some of the most popular myths.
Cloud computing isn’t safe
In general, humans are afraid of losing control.But just because data is located somewhere else, doesn’t mean that it is less or more secure. The only proven way, however, for you to assess the risk of the cloud is to test, monitor, and review the results. You may think the term ‘cloud’means that your files and data are simply floating around. This isn’t really the case. While the cloud isn’t foolproof, there are a number of security measures involved. Data is only ever lost when management loses control.
Server downtimes do still happen though.Last June, Instagram had a huge outage after a hurricane destroyed Amazon web servers in Virginia. There had also been separate service interruptions to Pinterest, Quora, Hootsuite, and Heroku. While it is easy to say, based on these examples, that cloud hosting is unreliable this wouldn’t be an accurate assessment. Other options also experience downtimes; cloud computing is just as reliable. In every case, business owners should have a contingency plan to be implemented when services are interrupted. This might mean load balancing across servers in various locations, or backing up data on separate services.
Cloud hosting is expensive
The process of transferring data to the cloud may present users with moderate upfront expenses, but cloud hosting does save you money in the long run. Cloud computing and hosting services minimize IT management charges, since much of the job is outsourced.
Cloud is only a fad
Do you use iTunes, Amazon, Gmail, Dropbox, eBay, travel sites, or online banking? I bet you do and maybe most of your friends and family members. Consumers already rely on the cloud for many of their important everyday tasks without a second thought. Many tech analysts already see the cloud an indispensable factor of the computing world. Dependence upon cloud computing is expected to grow significantly in the near future, and is definitely here to stay.
The cloud is only for trustworthy individuals
The corporate world depends on the cloud just as much as consumers do. There are currently thousands of organizations who use the service Salesforce to monitor and analyze sales data through the cloud. And more than 80% of Fortune 500 companies collaborate on projects via Yammer, an internal network service that is cloud hosted.