With the transition that many companies have made, to the cloud, this has made business operations so much easier. Whether it’s in cost efficiency, flexibility to ease of use, companies are now able to offload much of their workload to the cloud in order to make them more competitive in a growingly competitive business landscape. Companies are also thinking about security when they use the cloud, as it can be used to better protect them against ransomware and cybercriminals.
Though cloud computing works for most businesses, it doesn’t work for all. That said, there are a number of use cases that are able to show the massive benefits to its implementation.
Below are 5 common use cases of the cloud:
1. Large Data Analytics
When it comes to sourcing data, large amounts of data is a trend that can only be considered disruptive, which is continually causing havoc in the business arena. These larger organizations like Facebook and Amazon are forever gathering data on consumer likes, buying habits dislikes and use this data to determine what a consumer may choose to purchase in the future. Companies are constantly accumulating data, which they can use to better understand their clients, whether it’s in the area of marketing, sales, R&D and more. When it comes to compiling, storing and analyzing this information, you can’t go wrong with the cloud.
2. Backup and Recovery
When you opt to store your data on the cloud, the responsibility for that stored data not only lies with you but also the service provider. This saves a company on considerable amounts of money, whereas before they would have had to provide the infrastructure and maintenance, with the cloud, that’s all provided by the service.
The service provider is also responsible for keeping the store data secure and meeting any legal and compliance frameworks. With the cloud, you get far more flexibility, as you are able to store large amounts of data, and backup data on-demand. Recovery data is also done much faster because data is stored on multiple physical servers, instead of on-site in one data center. Popular cloud backup services include Google Drive, Dropbox and Amazon S3.
3. Test and Development
One of the most effective areas that the cloud can be used in, is a test and development environment. To create one of these environments, a budget must be created, along with the necessary setting, including assets and employees to work within said space. Once that’s done, you transition over to the configuration and installation of any and all platforms. All of these things are capable of extending the time that it would take for a project to be completed.
When cloud computing is entered into the mix, companies can now access readily available environments tailored to their specifications, in an instant. This also includes additional features, such as the automated provisioning of virtual and physical resources.
4. Scalable Usage
Cloud computing comes with many different subscription models that offer scalable resources. This means companies are only made to pay for what they use. This should help a company better manage any spikes in demands, without having to invest, long-term in any additional computer hardware.
Netflix, for example, is able to enhance its services by taking full advantage of cloud computing. Due to releases of TV shows and movies, at different specified times, Netflix is highly prone to spikes in server load. As a result, in their decision to move, from in-house to a cloud service, this allowed them to significantly expand their customer base, at the time, without having to spend additional revenue on infrastructure and maintenance costs.
5. Public and Hybrid Cloud
When looking at all the different incentives for taking advantage of the cloud, there are two situations where an organization may look into assessing applications that they intend to deploy within their own environment, while utilizing the cloud (which is illustrations of the public cloud). When it comes to test and development, there’s always that issue of time constraints, which is why adopting a hybrid cloud approach is highly incentivized. This allows for testing app workloads, therefore providing the organization with the environment, without having to invest large sums of money into something that may have been useless, if the workload testing was a failure.
Another great advantage of the hybrid cloud is its ability to expand during peak usage, which is typically the more preferred situation than hosting large amounts of infrastructure, which an organization would rarely use. An organization would rather have access to this additional capacity at specified times, when it’s necessary, which they can pay for, on a pay-as-you-go basis, this helps maximize performance while minimizing costs.
About The Author
Uchenna Ani-Okoye is a former IT Manager who now runs his own computer support website compuchenna.co.uk