Benefits of Using Cloud Services

Name: Benefits of Using Cloud Services
Author: Mark Dreyer

Learn the benefits of using cloud services

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Course: On-Demand

As businesses continue to rely on technology to run their operations, they need to have a reliable and flexible infrastructure in place. By using the cloud, businesses can achieve the high availability and scalability they need to grow. High availability is the ability of a system or resource to remain available to end users or anyone who is dependent on the resources with either minimal or zero downtime. In the case of the cloud, this means that even if one server or data center goes offline, the system can automatically fail over to another location, ensuring that the service remains available to users. Scalability refers to the ability of a system or service to handle an increased workload without experiencing performance issues. In the cloud, businesses can easily scale their resources up or down as needed without having to worry about the costs and challenges of maintaining their own hardware. By providing high availability and the ability to scale resources quickly and easily, the cloud offers businesses a number of benefits, including improved reliability, increased efficiency, cost savings, and greater flexibility. Let's look at these in more detail. By having a system that is continuously available and able to fail over in the event of an outage, businesses reduce the risk of downtime and improve the reliability of their operations. This means that users and customers can continue to access critical systems and remain productive. For example, online shopping. Customers expect to be able to make purchases quickly and without errors. If a hardware failure limits the ability for an online shopping system to work, customers will abandon it and shop at a competitor. With a highly available, reliable system, the shopping experience can remain open to customers despite any problems that might be faced. Businesses can better meet the demands of their customers and employees when they're able to scale resources up or down as needed. This leads to increased efficiency and productivity. In the case of online shopping, being able to scale up resources at a time of high demand would enable a shopping portal to meet the increased customer needs. Once this demand returns to a more normal level, the resources can be scaled down. This allows the retailer to reduce their cloud cost and operate more efficiently. By using the cloud, businesses only have to pay for the resources they use, and they don't have to invest in and maintain their own hardware. This can result in significant cost savings over time. Microsoft Azure offers a financially backed Service level agreement, or SLA, for many of their hosted services. This provides additional financial benefits in the event that a service is unavailable. Sometimes a private cloud or traditional infrastructure team can't offer a financially backed SLA. Instead, they might aim to meet a certain service level objective, or Slo for availability. With the cloud, businesses have greater flexibility and can easily adjust their resources to meet changing needs. This can allow your company to be more agile and responsive to market demands. Depending on the service businesses can often start by using a lower level of availability and then scale it up. This can be an advantage when moving a particular service from a development or testing phase and into production. Often these changes can easily be selected or toggled on and off instead of requiring a large rebuild of a solution. Microsoft Azure also offers high availability solutions that go beyond standard cloud platform features. For example, an organization may choose to use Azure DDoS protection. A DDoS is a distributed denial of service attack where an attacker tries to overwhelm a web service by sending it high levels of traffic. With Azure DDoS protection, these attacks can be avoided, which results in an increase in availability and reliability. It also provides a cost saving because there's no need for administrators to fix any resources that have been overwhelmed by a successful DDoS attack. The benefits of high availability and scalability in the cloud include improved reliability, increased efficiency, cost savings and greater flexibility. By leveraging the power of the cloud, businesses can ensure that their operations run smoothly and efficiently no matter what challenges they face.

Beginner Provider : Mark Dreyer 4 Lessons · 15m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

These lessons will discuss the ways that cloud computing can have a positive impact on an organization. We will explore the benefits of high availability, meaning the consistent accessibility of a resource, which is much easier to support in the cloud. We will also discuss reliability and predictability, both which ensure that cloud solutions remain operable in the face of unexpected issues. We will look at the ways that security and governance are used to minimize risk and meet compliance requirements. We will also discuss cloud manageability, and the ability to manage solutions in the cloud with multiple tools, and at different scales. All of these features can be extremely useful for organizations using the cloud. In this module, we will explore these features in depth to demonstrate the ways that cloud computing can provide benefits that are tailored to the needs of different customers.

These lessons will explore some of the benefits organizations can experience through using cloud computing. We will compare the possibilities and limits of cloud computing with those of traditional, on-premises infrastructure to explore why so many companies are choosing to move to the cloud.

What You'll Learn

Describe how high availability and scalability can be implemented in the cloud
Explain why cloud solutions tend to be more reliable and predictable than traditional on-premises infrastructure
Understand why security and governance are important in the cloud for minimizing risk and meeting compliance requirements
Explain the benefits of manageability in the cloud, including managing solutions with multiple tools and at different scales
Explain methods used to manage Azure

Key Takeaways

High availability means the consistent accessibility of a resource, which is much easier to support in the cloud.
Reliability and predictability help ensure that cloud solutions remain operable in the face of unexpected issues.
Security and governance are used to minimize risk and meet compliance requirements.
Cloud manageability allows solutions to be managed with multiple tools and at different scales.
Comparing cloud computing with traditional on-premises infrastructure helps explain why many companies are choosing to move to the cloud.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this course cover?

It covers the benefits of cloud computing for an organization, including high availability and scalability, reliability and predictability, security and governance, and manageability in the cloud.

What is high availability in the cloud?

High availability means the consistent accessibility of a resource, which the course explains is much easier to support in the cloud.

Why do organizations move from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud?

The course compares the possibilities and limits of cloud computing with those of traditional, on-premises infrastructure to explore why so many companies are choosing to move to the cloud, noting cloud solutions tend to be more reliable and predictable.

What skills does this course focus on?

It focuses on cloud applications, cloud computing, cloud infrastructure, cloud management, cloud services, and cloud technologies.

How are security and governance addressed in this course?

The course looks at the ways security and governance are used to minimize risk and meet compliance requirements in the cloud.