What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud server hosting offers several advantages, some of which may vary based on the size and type of business you’re running, the industry you operate in and where you are in the process of transforming your business.

For start-up businesses, the cloud can offer an essential differentiator. It empowers anyone with an idea to get their business up and running quickly with minimal up-front costs.
The cloud enables small to medium-sized businesses with limited resources to take advantage of industry-leading compute, storage and networking capabilities that they can scale on demand as their business grows.
Larger enterprises often face complex challenges ensuring the availability and performance of high-traffic websites and demanding applications, as well as infrastructure requirements that vary across departments. The cloud can help enterprises increase their operational efficiency, productivity and agility.

To make a more informed decision about whether the cloud can help your business, consider these additional advantages of cloud computing.

Why Use Cloud Computing?

Control Costs

The cloud enables you to leverage the power and performance of enterprise-grade IT infrastructure without the capital expenditure of managing and maintaining your own hardware. Its pay-as-you-go model can also help you control costs.

Improve Security

In a cloud environment, security is a shared responsibility. Your cloud hosting provider builds in resiliency and protection at the infrastructure level to minimize the risk of a breach, and can help you address compliance requirements.

Prepare for Growth

The cloud offers a flexible way for businesses to accommodate both unpredictable demand and planned growth more cost effectively. It can also be used as a platform for delivering new services and accelerating your time-to-market.

Focus on Innovation

The cloud enables you to focus on running your business, instead of your IT. Use your resources to design and deploy innovative applications and services that will drive business results and differentiate you from the competition.

How Can Rackspace Help?

Despite all of these advantages, the cloud is not necessarily the best option for everyone. Sometimes the complexity and expense of migrating an application to the cloud can outweigh the potential benefits. For example, if your business relies on applications designed to run on dedicated servers, such as enterprise resource planning or business intelligence apps, modifying legacy applications to be cloud-ready may not be cost effective.

Likewise, if your business has stringent security requirements or must comply with regulatory mandates, the enhanced security of a dedicated server environment may be a better choice for hosting your mission-critical applications.

In some cases, a flexible hybrid or multi-cloud configuration that enables you to connect a dedicated hosting environment to one or more clouds might be the answer. To learn more about our flexible managed hosting options and how to create a best-fit solution for your business, contact us. We’re here to help you succeed, 24x7x365.

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