What is a Cloud Data Center?

What is a Cloud Data Center?

Data centers are currently undergoing an evolution. For the past few decades, a traditional data center has been the dominating method of housing critical applications and data. They were a physical destination — warehouses of routers, switches, firewalls, storage systems, servers, and delivery controllers. IT teams managed these data centers and remained on the payroll, bleeding money any time a new piece of equipment emerged.  Enter the cloud revolution.  The invention of the cloud-based data center meant that businesses could enjoy the virtualization of their internal IT department without sacrificing performance. A cloud-based solution uses a third-party organization that controls a multi-cloud infrastructure that replaces the traditional on-site data center. These cloud solutions came under attack from traditionalists who perceived the cloud to be insecure, incapable, and an unnecessary expense.  These hardliners couldn’t be further from reality.  A cloud-based solution opens the door for businesses on strict budgets to utilize powerful technology. With a cloud-based data center, businesses free up initial investment costs and ongoing maintenance fees and enjoy world-class network security unavailable to them using a traditional data center. In this article, we explore how investing in a cloud service like Summit Hosting is a better business move than investing in traditional data centers.   

Why Invest in a Cloud Data Center

Computing solutions are an expensive part of business operations. An on-premise data center infrastructure is a massive investment both in start-up costs and ongoing maintenance costs. A more affordable solution for the ever-tighter budgets is cloud computing. Cloud computing offers incredible benefits over the traditional on-premise data center, including:

• Scalability – Only pay for what you need. And with a cloud-based service provider, like Summit Hosting, you have on-demand access to more data or computing capability when your business grows. You can also purchase additional bandwidth if your current setup no longer works. Summit Hosting grows as you grow, giving you the confidence to take the next step! 
• Up-to-Date Equipment – The lifecycle of computing equipment is quite short, and technology doubles in capability every 18 months. Updating components like routers every couple of years isn’t just impractical for many businesses — it’s downright unaffordable. A cloud infrastructure doesn’t have the same upgrade limitations. 
• Flexibility – A total cloud-based solution isn’t an ideal option for every business, but more businesses are taking advantage of a hybrid cloud platform. Using this platform, IT teams still manage an on-site data center for the most critical applications, while less sensitive apps and storage services rely on a cloud provider. 
• Easy to Migrate – Integrations and APIs allow data stored in traditional data centers to transfer to the cloud in a seamless way. Critics will point to horror stories, but when businesses take a methodical approach, the process is quick and painless. Summit Hosting’s experts can further help the integration process, answering any questions that may come up! 

Investing in cloud services means finding the service providers who will benefit you the most. Large companies like Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google Cloud may seem appealing, but they lack the personal touch your business needs. These platforms can offer you a dedicated server with admin rights, but you’ll be left on your own to manage all security, backups, firewall, tech support, installation and anti-malware.  Likewise, investing in a discount provider can spell disaster. That’s what makes Summit Hosting special. Summit Hosting provides a secure cloud solution like the big names but offers 24/7 human support.   

Cloud vs.Traditional Data Centers

There are many businesses that stand by the traditional data center infrastructure as the only sound option to handle enterprise-level workloads. They will state reasons such as giving up security control, challenges with automation, or reduced capabilities as reasons to avoid cloud services. We break down these myths and how a cloud-based data center outpaces traditional on-premise infrastructures. 

Pricing

Traditional on-site data centers have a massive cost association. First, businesses need to understand how much tech to invest in for optimum performance, the least amount of downtime, or latency, which will determine initial investment. Costs continue to add up when additional integrations and APIs join the equation. Adding network security or other IT infrastructure adds even more costs, like upgrades, updates, and ongoing maintenance.  However, a cloud-based data center doesn’t have an initial investment requirement because the physical infrastructure already exists through colocations or via a public cloud provider. You can also find private cloud options, but ultimately pricing comes down to your usage or workload requirements. Plus, when new equipment comes around, you aren’t stuck paying for the upgrades or the IT teams to maintain the systems. 

Capabilities

Data storage remains a key point of concern among traditional data center loyalists. There are further pain points concerning capabilities, with claims that cloud storage or cloud services can’t handle the same workloads as on-site data centers. The reality is that cloud-based data centers offer the same, if not more, capability than a traditional data center.  Cloud data centers offer high availability to hosted applications, and a quality cloud platform like Summit Hosting provides a 99% uptime — a rating many on-site data centers fail to achieve. Cloud computing supports virtualization and allows businesses to operate anywhere, which is becoming an important requirement. This level of accessibility is simply unmatched by a traditional data center. 

Security

Network security is one reason many businesses may be resistant to a cloud-based solution. A cloud data center requires a business to give up a certain level of security because the equipment to run storage services and computing tools is no longer on-site. The belief is that with the equipment under someone else’s hands, the risk of a security breakdown is increased.  These businesses employ IT teams with varying levels of background knowledge and professionalism. With a cloud solution, security is a cornerstone concern. For example, Summit Hosting implements a host of security protocols, including SSAE 18 certifications, dedicated server arrays, EV SSL encryption, multi-factor authentication, and VPNs. Summit Hosting goes far beyond your simple firewall.   

Discover Extraordinary Cloud Hosting with Summit Hosting

A traditional data center was revolutionary for its time. It helped businesses find the benefit of utilizing technology to advance productivity, performance, and bottom lines. However, for a long time, the prohibitively large investment required to get an on-site data center up and running prevented businesses from taking advantage of the most powerful software.  With the advent of cloud services and cloud computing, more businesses have the opportunity to invest in transformative technology. Cloud providers, like Summit Hosting, offer an affordable, pay-as-you-go platform that allows for access to data center benefits without destroying the budget. In a side-by-side comparison, cloud-based data centers blow their traditional counterparts apart. Cloud data centers are just cheaper, more capable, and better secured.   Summit Hosting is an industry leader in cloud-based hosting solutions. You get the same level of technology as the big names like Amazon or Microsoft, but the human connection is only available with a personalized service like Summit Hosting. Enjoy 24/7 access to technical and customer support, 99% uptime, and dedicated server access with Summit Hosting. Request a quote today to see how affordable a cloud hosting solution really is!