A Complete Understanding of Application Cloud Hosting
Application cloud hosting is the process of making websites and applications accessible to users through cloud computing resources. Unlike traditional application hosting, which uses a single server to host workloads, application cloud hosting relies on a cloud infrastructure that distributes services across a network of physical and virtual servers.
In this post, we’ll learn more about what it means to host applications on the cloud, the features and use cases of application cloud hosting, and how Parallels® RAS can help you optimize cloud application hosting services.
Features of Application Cloud Hosting
Application cloud hosting relies on a cloud service provider (CSP) who oversees its setup, security, and maintenance while sometimes allowing customers to customize the IT infrastructure online. The CSP spreads the compute, storage, and networking resources across tens or even hundreds of virtual machines (VMs) in different locations.
Organizations can leverage application cloud hosting services to load balance input/output demands in a cloud infrastructure configuration. Some of the notable features of cloud application hosting services include:
- Distributed IT resources. Instead of relying on a dedicated server in a single physical site, application cloud hosting services leverage dispersed IT resources across multiple VMs that can be based anywhere. In such an architecture, users can access the cloud-based content from any location, provided they have an endpoint with an internet connection.
- Flexible resource scaling. In traditional application hosting, scaling up the operations means installing new server units or upgrading existing equipment. This process is tiresome and can lead to poor services because IT teams have to cope with the demands of growing applications or websites. When outsourcing application hosting services to a CSP, you can scale up resources easily in real time based on application demands.
- Flexible pricing schemes. CSPs charge for their application hosting services based on a pay-as-you-go pricing scheme rather than a flat-rate fee. The pay-as-you-go pricing model is beneficial because it reduces capital costs associated with purchasing hardware, software, and specialized services like cybersecurity applications.
- Automated solutions. CSPs provide automated tools such as application programming interfaces (APIs) and web portals that organizations can leverage to analyze the application demands. These tools can also provide metering capabilities at some level of the services. By automatically and dynamically provisioning the IT resources, IT teams can optimize the performance of an application and boost resource efficiency.
Benefits of Application Cloud Hosting
Like any other cloud-based service, the advantages of application cloud hosting are similar to cloud computing benefits. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Cost Effective
Hosting applications in the cloud can lead to significant cost savings since organizations no longer need to buy and maintain costly servers. This is especially cost-effective for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) with tight budget lines since they no longer need to recruit large IT teams to run their infrastructures.
Reliable
Modern datacenters that support today’s cloud infrastructure run the latest server racks, multiple backup power supplies, and robust cooling systems. Organizations can leverage these features to boost application performance with a strong focus on reliability and security. Organizations using application cloud hosting services can also get extra features such as high availability and disaster recovery.
On-Demand
Most CSPs provide plans that allow organizations to pay only for the services they consume, allowing them to meet surges in demand and keep up with the ever-changing IT resource requirements. For example, consider an organization operating an e-commerce platform that receives more traffic only on certain days, such as Black Friday. With application cloud hosting, such a platform can mobilize extra IT resources to cope with additional traffic during peak times.
Scalable
Application cloud hosting relies on an infrastructure that achieves scalability through virtualization. Unlike physical servers, whose computing resources and performance are fixed, VMs are highly flexible, and you can scale them up or down easily based on the workload demands. You can also move VMs to different servers or host them on multiple servers easily, with workloads and applications being moved to larger VMs as needed.
Secure
Cloud computing infrastructures provide multiple levels of security within their networks, allowing organizations to protect their resources against unauthorized access, cybersecurity breaches, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and more. For example, security policies and protocols, such as robust access control and data encryption, can prevent unauthorized users from accessing confidential applications. In addition, cloud computing infrastructures have built-in redundancies that ensure that resources are always available.
Use Cases for Application Cloud Hosting
Although application cloud hosting may not make sense in every business situation, it provides a couple of use cases with undeniable benefits that you can’t ignore. Let’s examine a few of them.
- Hyper-text transfer protocol (HTTP) services and backend applications. HTTP is an essential application component that allows the software to communicate with a backend server. Application developers can leverage application cloud hosting infrastructure to deploy a code written in any language to any IT environment, provided they have created a container from it.
- Event-driven and data processing applications. Event-driven and data processing applications allow organizations to track valuable business moments, such as business transactions. Organizations can then act on such events to improve their core operations. Organizations need to store, collect, and process information in real-time to reap the value of the event- and data-driven applications. Application cloud hosting can allow businesses to scale their operations for such workloads based on workload demands with minimum configuration.
- Container-based applications and services. Containerization has emerged as one of the efficient ways of virtualization available to application developers. When properly configured, containers can increase the efficiency of development and IT operations (DevOps) and accelerate applications’ deployment while minimizing infrastructure conflicts. With application cloud hosting, organizations can easily consolidate their data by deploying container-enabled workloads seamlessly across different IT environments.
Differences between Cloud-Hosted and Cloud-Based
There are some common misconceptions about the differences between cloud-hosted and cloud-based applications. A cloud-hosted application is generally an on-premises software that a CSP hosts on dedicated physical servers and VMs on behalf of the customer. Cloud-hosted services provide the same advantages as other cloud services, including remote access and the ability of IT teams to integrate them with other solutions.
Since the CSP maintains the application and hardware, there is less need for IT teams to manage them when compared to traditional hosting solutions. Typically, cloud-hosted applications leverage single-tenant architectures because they rely on dedicated servers and VMs.
Cloud-based or cloud-native applications, on the other hand, are applications explicitly deployed for cloud computing environments. These applications are hosted in typical cloud infrastructures, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure, and delivered to customers as Software as a Service (SaaS).
Unlike cloud-hosted applications that use single-tenant architectures, cloud-based applications leverage multi-tenant architectures where a shared application instance serves multiple users. The shared code base in cloud-based applications allows the CSP to provide faster upgrades because all the updates are undertaken at once.
Parallels RAS Optimizes Application Cloud Hosting
Businesses have realized that operations can’t stop when employees cannot access their offices. Similarly, employees expect to work remotely by accessing their applications and data from any endpoint and location. Recently, we’ve seen many virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) providers emerging as alternative solutions for remote access.
However, many organizations are turned off by poor user experience and the high cost of IT infrastructure associated with such solutions. Parallels RAS is an affordable and secure VDI solution that efficiently delivers virtual applications and desktops hosted on hypervisors and other remote desktop servers to any device, anywhere.
By hosting applications in a secure private cloud, Parallel RAS enables businesses to benefit from reduced IT administration costs while allowing IT teams to control access to applications from a single console.
With Parallels RAS, organizations can easily choose from the three cloud computing service models—SaaS, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), or Platform as a Service (PaaS)—based on their workload requirements. As an inclusive VDI solution, Parallels RAS also supports the deployment of workloads in on-premises, public cloud, and hybrid cloud environments.
Try out Parallels RAS today and see how it optimizes application cloud hosting!
