The 7 Supreme Benefits of Cloud Computing

What is the cloud anyway, and why is everyone talking about it? 

A study showed that a quarter of Americans believe that the cloud is a real cloud. All their uploaded family pictures and home videos are sitting up there somewhere, just waiting to be rained down on Earth. So, in that case, the cloud has a lot in common with the weather, which everyone talks about. But unlike the weather, there’s a lot you can do about the cloud.

For one thing, businesses make the cloud a tool for easily connecting with customers anywhere on the planet with amazing application performance. But for that, they need the right kind of cloud. Not every cloud will get it right. More about that later — but for now, let’s take a dive into some of the best things that the public cloud can do for your business.

Why Cloud Computing? Should I join the 9 out of 10 businesses that have moved their work to the cloud? If you need convincing, here’s my grand list of the top seven advantages of cloud computing for business:

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1. You Get (Only) What You Need

Perhaps the best thing about cloud computing is that businesses pay only for what they consume, without the sticky nature of investment in traditional IT resources (i.e., servers, storage media, maintenance, and IT staff). Enterprises developing new applications get the flexibility to increase the physical resources they consume (i.e., CPU cycles, storage) in parallel to the growth of their business. Conversely, if a business’ needs decrease, they can consume — and pay for — fewer services.

If your business expands and you want to reach customers in Timbuktu — no problem, just spin up a new deployment, pay for the additional resources, and hope that the cloud will offer the level of service and performance that your end-users need. What kind of cloud can do that for you? We’re getting to that….

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2. Keep Your Data Safe & Always Available

This can also be thought of as the benefit of your CISO manager sleeping well at night. Public cloud providers invest heavily in data security so you don’t have to — at least not directly. They provide the most up-to-date cyber security solutions as well as physical security, hardware updates, and data redundancy. This dramatically reduces the headache of cyberattacks.

Having a solid disaster recovery backup plan in the event of a power outage is essential for business continuity because data loss could wipe out a company. Top-tier public cloud companies therefore typically provide wall-to-wall protection through data mirroring, automatic data back-up, and data redundancy.

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3. Give Your Data Room to Grow

It wasn’t long ago that when a development team wanted to add storage capacity they needed to configure the physical infrastructure and its file environment. Now all they need to do is pull out their credit card and be in touch with their friendly public cloud provider.

Cloud-based storage provides DevOps teams with the flexibility to grow their applications without being limited by mundane physical concerns, such as storage infrastructure and data portability. Developers get the ability to manage their own storage needs and are empowered to take full advantage of evolving cloud-native environments.

Software-defined platforms enable developers to provision storage as needed. Through a single API, cloud-based storage provides persistent storage across many different kinds of infrastructures, including hybrid and multi-cloud environments,

Which leads us directly to our next benefit…..

4. Develop as a Team, Cloud-Natively

It’s not just the ability to easily expand capacity. The cloud enables development teams to collaborate and roll out features faster and with better quality. How do they do it? Simple: Cloud-based managed Kubernetes services. I’ll explain:

To support the tremendous potential of the cloud-native applications, many organizations use a microservice-based architecture and containers. If one part of the application fails, or needs updating, the other parts are not affected. But things get complicated when deploying an application across multiple machines. Developers must handle scheduling and resource allocation for each microservice, which can be a huge hassle.

Kubernetes is now the de facto standard for management of these processes. Kubernetes may, and frequently does, determine that resources need to be provisioned, configured, and updated. If no one “listens” to these signals, the application will quickly fail. That’s why organizations that want to focus on application development — and not on managing infrastructure — run deployments through cloud-based managed Kubernetes services. A managed Kubernetes service, such as that provided by Ridge, will ensure that the desired states are automatically  implemented.

Fortunately, there is now a cloud solution that streamlines multi-location application testing and deployment (spoiler: it’s called a massively distributed cloud, see below).

5. Dream & Deploy — The Sky’s the Limit

Many industries and use cases, such as travel, video streaming, and security systems, benefit directly from cloud-native platforms. And with the advent of 5G, it’s hard to imagine all the new use cases that will become commonplace in the next five years.

True, we may not soon see brain surgeons lying on a beach using VR headsets to perform a remote operation. At least not if it’s my brain on the line. But other cloud-based medical scenarios are becoming more feasible: Consider an ambulance with multiple sensors collecting and streaming information in real-time while the patient is being transported. Or doctors remotely guiding paramedics through emergency procedures. Or even use cases, such as interconnected assembly-line robots, which have less of a mission-critical nature. Read our article on Cloud Computing in Healthcare to learn the details.

Can all these use cases be served by cloud computing? They are all very latency-sensitive and the hyperscalers may be located too far away to provide the required response time and level of service. Can the public cloud meet the challenge? Stay tuned, below.

6. Cloud Gaming

Admittedly, the world could carry on without this particular use case, and I debated whether or not to include it. But there’s no point in arguing with a multi-billion dollar industry.

Cloud gaming can eliminate the need to install games and content updates. All that’s needed is a stable internet connection. Using a mouse, gamers input commands that are sent to the remote computer running a game instance. The server carries out the commands and then streams the result back to be rendered through a graphics processing unit. As games evolve, gamers would always get the latest version, independent of the device.

Does it work as intended? The jury is still out. Google Stadia completely shut down at the beginning of this year, thus creating doubt about Google’s dedication to the cloud gaming initiative. Microsoft, on the other hand, succeeded in creating a cloud gaming platform Xbox Cloud Gaming that utilizes Microsoft’s data centers around the world to provide their players with the absolute lowest latency that is crucial for cloud gaming.

What’s clear is that the plausibility and playability of cloud gaming is very dependent on internet connection and distance from the provider’s servers (spoiler 2: check out the massively distributed cloud section below).

7. Excellent User Experience

Mankind, or at least the DevOps portion of it, is progressing to a new generation of cloud-native applications. Many of these new applications have strict requirements for response time, such as the abovementioned cloud gaming, as well as many others, including autonomous vehicles, telemedicine, robotics, and AR/VR. Potential user benefit is tremendous but is highly dependent on the ability to transfer and process large amounts of data in real-time. These applications can therefore not be effectively supported by a cloud located many miles away.

To address this challenge, Ridge has created a massively distributed cloud model which delivers the full benefit of location-sensitive cloud-native applications. Ridge Cloud has the flexibility of the public cloud but brings computing resources closer to end-users. With its managed Kubernetes service, enterprises easily deploy and scale workloads, and end-users enjoy an excellent user experience in any location.

Ridge’s underlying infrastructure is created by federating thousands of local cloud providers all over the world at the resolution of a geographic region or even of a metropolitan area. There is no need for any additional infrastructure. A single API enables application developers to access each data center on the Ridge global network and to provide users with the benefit of a localized cloud experience. Ridge partners with best-in-class data centers after thoroughly vetting their equipment, security, SLAs, historical uptime, and connectivity.

Wrapping up: What are the Benefits of Cloud Computing?

We covered seven of the big ones above. But in many cases, you need the right cloud model to realize the cloud’s fullest potential.

By offering an addition to the public cloud model, Ridge’s distributed cloud unlocks the full potential of cloud-native computing. Its distributed architecture empowers developers with the freedom to customize a cloud strategy that best fits their business needs. Easily accessed through a single API, Ridge Cloud is fully interoperable with any legacy infrastructure, whether on-prem servers, colo deployments, local data centers, or hybrid cloud. Using Ridge’s managed web services — Kubernetes, containers, and object storage — developers enjoy the ease of use of the public cloud together with superior performance, high throughput, and full data control of localized infrastructure.

Ridge is changing the way businesses think about growing. For them, cloud-nativity now enables them to innovate, to keep up with evolving business needs, and to realize the full business benefits of cloud computing. 

Book a demo to learn more about how Ridge Cloud can help your business grow.