Cloud technology as a driver of digital transformation

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing, often also referred to as cloud hosting, describes the provision of hosting and server services based on a virtualized cloud infrastructure. In contrast to traditional hosting solutions, where performance is only called up from one host system, cloud computing is a distributed system in which a large number of physical or virtual machines at different locations can process requests. This guarantees high availability and security and enables highly individual and flexible handling of any solutions. In order to maintain flexibility in billing, cloud computing ultimately only charges for what is actually used (pay-as-you-go). Unused capacities do not incur any costs. For many companies, the newly gained technical and business flexibility is one of the main reasons why they rely on cloud technology for the provision of web applications (e.g. blogs or online stores).

Advantages of cloud computing

In direct comparison to standard shared or dedicated hosting models on the market, cloud computing offers a wide range of advantages. The most decisive ones can be described as follows:

• High reliability and safety
  Thanks to the redundant provision of data, cloud computing solutions can be regarded as very reliable and secure. Compared to traditional hosting, total infrastructure failures are much less likely.
• Tremendous performance
  The technical bundling of several virtual or physical machines allows ideal load distribution and offers enormous, theoretically unlimited performance. This means that even applications with high performance requirements run smoothly.
• Lightning-fast scaling
  Cloud computing services can be scaled up or down automatically or manually within a very short time. This means that applications remain easily accessible even in the event of short-term load changes.
• Flexible pricing models
  Pay-as-you-go gives users of cloud computing services maximum flexibility on an hourly basis. Paying too much was yesterday. On-demand resources are the future of an industry with dynamic requirement profiles.

Challenges related to cloud computing

Although cloud computing is a good solution for companies with volatile infrastructure requirements due to the numerous advantages mentioned above, the technology also brings with it a number of challenges that administrators have to face on a daily basis. A study conducted by Flexera in 2023 highlighted this. The most important points among all respondents included

• Cost control
  82% of all respondents stated that controlling the costs of cloud computing solutions is a major challenge. The integration of comprehensive tools for analysis is therefore an integral part of any cloud concept.
• Security
  Cloud computing solutions from large providers are often opaque and it is often very difficult to determine the exact location of data storage and data processing.
• Lack of expertise
  A lack of expertise was cited as a pain point by 78% of respondents. Due to the newness of the technology, there is a lack of skilled people capable of managing cloud computing solutions.
• Compliance
  At 73%, compliance is also an important topic for organizations of all sizes. Many are primarily concerned with the location of persistent storage and the requirement for a proper data backup strategy. Unfortunately, the requirements differ from country to country and so do the measures taken by the relevant providers.

Conclusion

Cloud is the future! In a constantly changing world, solutions are needed that can react flexibly to short-term requirements. The cloud computing approach offers an optimal solution for this.