Here is a guest post by Charles Homes who is a consultant at Hosting.com. For more information on Charles and his firm check out their web site. I am pleased to have guest posts on occasion and thank Charles for this one. As a disclaimer, he provided me with nothing more than useful content. In turn I simply offered the space.

The union of cloud computing and hosting technology has produced wonders for the business community. The main progeny of this marriage has been a dynamic, scalable system that allows business to allocated informational resources with an efficiency hitherto only dreamed of. The hosting packages paid for by your business can be modified as needed as website traffic grows, with no need of strict hosting plans or even laid-out rules. Flexibility like this saves businesses money because they only have to pay for the services they use while simultaneously avoiding server down-time, one of the banes of the information technology industry. 

When it comes to actual products that use cloud hosting, there are three types to choose from. Depending on their business plan, size and service needs, different businesses will be suited to different hosting plans. 

Cloud Shared Hosting
On the small end of the scale, shared cloud hosting is the first option. This hosting plan is expressly for those starting a new business or website. The rule is excellent reliability, performance and customer service for these plans. Some examples of businesses like these are those with only a blog, a small online community, or a simple e-commerce site. This low-cost plan offers a wonderful balance between expenses and uptime.

Cloud Servers
The next level up is cloud servers. Cloud servers offer clients all the benefits of dedicated virtual servers, but at a tiny fraction of the expense. A cloud server offers flexible access and upgraded data processing, as well as the convenience of being able to get at your websites whenever you like. The servers can be scaled whenever you wish to meet the needs of your business as it grows in real-time. Since you only pay for the server space and bandwidth you actually use, this represents a significant decrease in operating expenses.

Cloud Storage
The application of cloud computing to data storage and back-up yields cloud storage. This form of data storage offers businesses high-performing, scalable as well as future proofed data storage and retrieval methods. Media and files are stored in virtual memory banks and consequently can be accessed from anywhere at any time of the day or night. Cloud storage is often done by using storage area network disks. Cloud storage features faster data input and output and greatly enhanced reliability. Not only personal and business data can be stored, but you can even back up internal files and give your employees the ability to their work from anywhere on Earth.

Doing Business In The Cloud
If your company depends on your customers being able to access your services twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, cloud hosting is definitely for you. Since hosting is spread between multiple servers, there is less risk of down-time which means that your business does not take a hit from inability to access your websites. Think about Twitter for a minute: do you really want your website's equivalent of the fail whale to become the punch line to hundreds of techie jokes?


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