As a small business owner or a even as someone with a moderately successful website, you might be wondering what cloud hosting can do for you. After all, you’ve probably used your existing hosting service for years. You’re paying for space on a server somewhere and, well, it’s the internet, so distances don’t matter anymore — right?

 

Not exactly. Let’s say the server with your data is in Los Angeles and there’s a demand for your website about cats doing cute things in Europe. The request from your European users connects through local peers and over internet backbones and all means of other cables and wireless relays. Once your hosting service’s server receives the request, the data for your site travels through the same route. Keep in mind that information on the internet is sent via packets around the world, to be reassembled where the data was requested.

 

While all this takes place at very fast speeds, there is a noticeable lag between the request and receiving the website that your users that are far away from your server will notice. Studies have shown that the more responsive a website is, the more likely it is to have people buy your product or more fully engage them in your website.

 

True cloud hosting will allow you to allocate your resources on demand. Is your website in demand in France? Create a virtual server and host your website there. Is it getting pinged hard from China? Deploy a server in our Hong Kong location.

 

But wait — there’s more.

 

Even if you have the resources to deploy your own racks of servers around the world, cloud hosting still offers compelling uses for its use. Setting up a cloud server doesn’t mean you have to wait weeks for someone to set up a new rack — it means clicking a few boxes and having a new presence in moments. Instead of needing diagram and hire a subcontractor on site to upgrade memory and storage on your servers, this can be done from the ease and speed of a control panel.

 

Our servers are also all virtualized meaning you can run your own kernel and you’ll have full root access. You’ll never have to worry about the upcoming IPv4 crunch, as we run a dual IPv4/IPv6 stack that we develop and maintain in-house.

 

In fact, everything about our cloud hosting service is developed in house. You’ll never need to wait for an outside developer to upgrade the service (which can’t be said about other virtual hosting services).

 

This is what cloud hosting is — the ability to set up a server anywhere, anytime instantly for a seamless web experience.

 

If you think your website or your organization’s website could benefit from cloud hosting, contact us immediately. You’ll be surprised with how competitive our prices are to your current host.

 

In upcoming additions to this series, we’ll discuss Anycast, appliances and virtualization, as well as use cases that may apply to you.