In this post: Explore the topic of cloud’s computing scalability in this installment of ADAPTURE’s “Clearing Up the Cloud” series.
Feel like you only know enough about cloud to be dangerous? You’re in luck because we promised to set the cloud record straight in this blog series called “Clearing up the Cloud”. As you weigh the pros and cons of implementing public cloud, we will provide you with concrete reference material through clear-cut definitions of cloud’s features and benefits. Last time, we established the main differences between cloud flexibility and agility.
Today we’re going to take the next fundamental step for cloud clarity and discuss computing scalability.
Computing Scalability and Real-Time Needs
While flexibility and agility offer you application diversity and speed-to-market, cloud scalability grants you workload adaptability. The ADAPTURE cloud experts define scalability more specifically as a feature of cloud services that “allows for increasing resource utilization for an application in reaction to increased requirements.” Let’s break that down a bit more.
Steady State to Capacity
Sometimes referred to as “burstability,” scalability does just that—when end-user demand increases or seasonal workloads intensify, cloud’s scalable infrastructure can provide bursts of additional resources on demand—if you’ve architected your application correctly.
This cloud feature is especially beneficial to corporations with seasonal or oscillating workloads. Take, for instance, a Tax firm. As customers dust off their Tax forms before Tax season, the aforementioned firm will need additional resources, starting in November and ending sometime in May. Once Tax season is over, however, the Tax firm’s workload will return to its typical steady-state for the remainder of the year. Without cloud, that firm would need to have the data center capacity for a busy season ready and available at all times—even during quiet months, which equals idling assets and money lost. This same kind of thing happens with almost every seasonal business.
Thankfully, if you’ve architected your application to take advantage of scale-out, and deployed it on cloud infrastructure, this doesn’t have to be your story.
Ramp Up in Real-Time
As we mentioned before, cloud computing scalability benefits IT departments and business users by providing the necessary additional resources during a company’s busy season. Neither management—nor the users—should experience an interruption in service. While this kind of rescaling is typically done to a larger size or volume, this same ability to “rise to the occasion” works in reverse. As soon as your company no longer needs the additional resources, the cloud infrastructure can be spun back down to its original steady state. You are billed only for what you use for as long as you use it.
So rather than pay for the housing, cooling, and energy costs of idling servers, why not use the scalable nature of cloud architecture to meet your company’s seasonal and, at times, unpredictable demands? Cloud will always have the resources you need as soon as you need them—within a few hundred milliseconds, of course.
Don’t Stop Here!
Cloud Scalability is still just the start of your cloud journey.
You’ve already added three concrete definitions to your cloud computing lexicon. And there’s plenty more where that came from. Stay tuned for more installments that will continue to help you “clear up the cloud.”
Can you relate to the seasonal woes of a “bursty” business? Talk with one of our expert Solution Architects to discuss how cloud can bring added efficiency to enable your company’s real-time workflow.
Click here for the next installment of ADAPTURE’s “Clearing Up the Cloud” series: Geographic Availability.
