AWS, RDS, Azure, Oracle. You’ve probably heard of these services at some point and wondered what they can do for you. We keep hearing about the cloud and how great it is, but do you know why businesses are choosing it? It’s a complex system of IT infrastructure that manages the everyday difficulties of building and maintaining a server environment. Simply put, cloud computing is like a home away from home. It holds data and environments for you so you don’t have to buy countless servers that get too hot and keep IT support on standby all day. Any DIY hardware solution means money upfront to buy items and people needed for development. Instead of dealing with the physicality of countless computers, servers, hard drives, VPN connections, and extra bodies, you could have all the hardware and connections ready at any time.
API’s, migrations, business analytics, servers, security, all require expertise. Are you prepared to handle everything?
What is cloud computing?
Most businesses that accommodate large amounts of data need lots of computers, hard rives, and servers. We might not be able to see data, but we have to handle the physical space it occupies. A typical in-house operation will have servers for memory and operations. But what happens when business starts to grow? More data means more memory and more memory comes from hard drives. A single hard drive, server, and connection can only hold so much data, so you have to buy new servers as data volumes grow. To alleviate the stress of growing data, people and businesses turn to cloud operations. Data servers provide storage and computing capabilities while platform resources make it easy to build and connect applications, all without continuous management.
Within servers, every database and data stream needs infrastructure to facilitate processing. What is the data source? Where will data be stored? What platform or environment is needed? How are connections made? Cloud computing will establish the connections and data repositories you need for smooth data architecture. Things like data mining and database management become easier when you don’t have to spend time (and money) on running your own server farm.
How does it help business?
Can you buy all the resources you need in time for new data? Can you predict when you’ll need to expand in time? How long will it take to buy, build, and maintain the servers and connections you need? There are uncertainties with data that, if not addressed, will cost you time, money, and customers. When businesses start to grow, there’s an influx of data. This will lead to data ingestion problems that affect processing and analytics. If there are no appropriate storage spaces, connections, or support, your business won’t be able to grow. Buying servers, space for the servers, people to support the servers, and more developers can cost business anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.Any DIY hardware solution means money upfront to buy items and people needed for development. Instead of dealing with the physicality of countless computers, servers, hard drives, VPN connections, and extra bodies, you could have all the hardware and connections ready at any time.
When you’re not worrying about buying more equipment, you can focus on better data analytics and cost-effective scaling. And it stems from better storage and accessibility that doesn’t require time-consuming capital expenses and man-power. Just pay for the computational power you use and request more space as needed. Cloud computation can provide a ready environment for developers to create and manage applications without having to worry about servers and connections.
What do I need?
To reach fully functional cloud services, there are a few crucial steps. It takes time and the help of skilled developers to migrate and translate functions and configurations. Depending on your data, there might a longer migration period or more translations needed to perfect the transition. It’s an analytics process nonetheless that requires data, testing, and validation, so consider budgets, timelines, and scope (like any other project). Growing data is unpredictable and unmanageable if you aren’t completely prepared before big data comes your way. Make the most of your data.
For more information about our data ingestion, data migration, or data lake services, contact us.