Nicholas Carr in his best-selling book The Big Switch relates how cloud computing is changing the way businesses, communities and individuals live and work. He explained the changes by relating it to the shift in electric grid a hundred of years ago. Companies used to generate their own power supply until electric utility companies did that for them. He said that the same thing is happening in today's world wide computers. Prior to cloud computing, companies relied on traditional client-server software. Due to greater demand in terms of scale and security, hosted and cloud applications came as a solution. Others say that the two applications are the same. This article aims to shed light on the difference between the two in terms of scale, security and cost.
Scale.
Cloud apps are available to anyone with a web-enabled device and reliable internet connection. There are several cloud apps available which can be catered to the needs of the user. Once the user likes the app, he simply pay a monthly or annual rate to use the app. The cloud provider sets up and maintains the application for the customer. On the other hand, hosted apps are offered to customers on a licence fee, and customers will usually pay for all IT infrastructure and support services necessary. Hosted apps are accessed over the internet or a private network.
Security.
Basically, both cloud apps and hosted apps offer security to their customers in the same way that the banks offer security to money. Both providers have access to comprehensive security, backup, recovery, and support services. The difference lies with the level privacy for the storage. While cloud apps are stored "in the cloud" of a specific provider (e.g. Google, Oracle), hosted apps are stored in the dedicated server for a certain client or a certain group of clients. Most hosted apps deliver "Five Nines" (99.999%) uptime, which is equivalent to five minutes downtime in a year.
Cost.
Compared to running their own hosted server software, companies who use cloud applications definitely save on costs due to improved efficiency. First, they do not have to employ an IT team to maintain their system. Second, they can take advantage of new applications and technologies available to the providers without incurring additional costs. Third, they can focus on their core business rather than IT issues. Fourth, they only pay a small part of the total cost of the application, hardware, system support and upgrades. Fifth, they save customers from upfront capital expenditure needed if they will run their own client server software. When cloud apps are compared to hosted apps, cloud apps are still less costly.
To further comparison on cloud and hosted apps, listed below are their advantages and disadvantages.
Cloud apps are offered to customers at a very affordable price. Disadvantage of cloud apps include the need to rework existing applications to fit the cloud and the hardship of integrating two applications as befits the need of the customers.
On the other hand, hosted apps are still owned by the customers. The providers only give server space, support services and maintenance. Disadvantages of hosted apps would be inability to access the system during downtime and the need for higher bandwidth especially if the systems works on scanned images.
In general though, choosing between the two services would still depend on the need of the customer. If the customer aims for a less costly solution, then cloud apps would be a better pick. However, if security is of utmost priority in the business, the hosted apps would be the better choice.
Yardbook is a customer management system for gardeners, landscapers and lawn care professionals. We help management customer information, job estimates and invoices, making the entire process much more simpler, and creating time savings for our users.
View the original article here
article post by pdf merge