Small business owners are often inundated with the latest in technology. At the same time, there is often a lot of misinformation about new technology, or even technology that is not new but it is now becoming more accessible to a wide variety of businesses.
Cloud hosting is one of these types of technologies. Using cloud technology is not new, it has been available since the mid-1990s and in general use since the early part of the 2000s. However, it was really the use of Google Apps and the Microsoft programs that brought the use of “the cloud” into the general public.
As a general way to think of cloud hosting, consider a single physical server located in a specialized location that is constantly monitored for performance and security. This server is divided into virtual servers, each which have their own allocation of the resources and are separate from each other. However, the virtual servers have advanced resources that are pulled from the network of physical servers, adding versatility and computing capacity.
Public and Private Clouds
The use of cloud hosting can be on public clouds or private clouds. The private clouds are the most secure as there is only one user on the cloud. Public clouds allow for multiple users and the same networks to complete the transmission of data.
At the same time, there are security features in place that ensure they meet all industry standards for accepting payments online or processing other types of data and information. For most business operations, the public cloud is more than satisfactory to meet all security and processing needs.
The benefit of any type of cloud hosting is that data stored in the cloud can be accessed anywhere and from any device. This means access to information is never limited, and storage and processing power are also easy to manage.