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Is web hosting considered a form of cloud computing?
A friend and I were having a debate over this. I'd say yes, he said not really. Can anyone help resolve this? If yes, why? If no, why not?
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7 Answers
No, web hosting shouldn't be considered cloud computing even though there are many who lump it into that group at times.
A part of what constitutes cloud computing is the dynamic way in which resources can be provisioned and scaled. Web hosting provisioning has gotten more simplified over the years, but it still isn't configured to scale all that well. And, it's not charged on a pure usage model.
Cloud Computing is the continued evolution of remote computing that we've been on for a while. Depending on which element of cloud you're discussing (PaaS, SaaS, IaaS, etc), Web Hosting is a few levels down...
Web hosting can be considered a form of cloud computing only when hosting is done on a cloud server and all the benefits of cloud computing technology are availed.
For more information, visit this link -
http://www.myrealdata.com/cloud-computing.html
I would actually say "yes", but in a "sort of" way. It really depends on the definition and use. For example, you can host websites in the cloud. Put some scalable cloud servers on a front-end behind a load balancer, and then even optionally push data from a DB server in the back end. All of that can be in the cloud. We at GoGrid, see this business case all of the time. Hosting websites is one of the purest forms of cloud (we even created a cloud hosting package called the "Scalable Website Solution" - http://www.gogrid.com/cloud-hosting/cloud-hosting-packages/scalable-website.php).
But don't get sucked into a VPS or shared hosting vendor pitch about their solution being cloud. Most frequently, it isn't, in fact, it's probably more "cloud washing" than cloud.
Lastly, if you think about Blogger or WordPress - they are providing blog hosting which is, SaaS, which, also is...yes, cloud.
Web Hosting is a use case of Cloud computing, so I would also say that it is a form of cloud computing. Hope that helps.
Answer is no to Cloud Computing....Yes to Cloud Based Services. Hosted is Hosted...private or public no matter how you slice up the terminiology.
The key to differentiating differnt forms or Cloud technologies are through the costing models of CAPEX or OPEX. CAPEX being Business owned Vs OPEX being Business rented.
All in all for most people, the Cloud is "cloudy" because of the way terminology is abused from time to time.
Interesting idea Todd. But I have a question, if it is "cloud-based" how is it not "cloud computing". If it fits into the characteristics of cloud computing: on-demand, pay for what you use, programmatically controlled, "as a service", no CapEx, etc, I would say that it is cloud computing. Remember that there are various layers to the cloud: http://pyramid.gogrid.com breaks it down a bit. You do have to be careful about cloud-washing, where people simply slap the term "cloud" on to something that doesn't have the cloud characteristics. But if you, again, think about the SaaS layer (like Wordpress.com), they are providing a hosting-type of "service." If you want cloud "infrastructure", traverse down the pyramid and deploy cloud infrastructure which can be used to create hosting-type services. We have customers who use our infrastructure to then provide hosting services to their customers.
I guess it is all about how you look at it and your interpretation of whether cloud services are considered cloud.
Yes if you are runing some thing like web based service like sugarCRM
In my opinion, I would say no. When I think of cloud computing, I think of software that is used for multiple users (that don't actually have it on their personal computers), or storage of data used for specific tasks. Web hosting is a service provided to give a "medium" that could be used for cloud computing, but also could be used just as a personal web page.
You can have cloud computing with no access to the internet, creating an intranet or LAN only the company can use. This can be accomplished without any web hosting at all.
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