Cloud Hosting

In the world of web hosting, there are many options that will all get your site on the web. However, each of them cater directly to website owners needs - whether those needs be big or small.

While they all act as a storage place for your website, where they differ is the amount of storage capacity, control, technical knowledge requirement, server speed and reliability. These are the six types of web hosting you will most often come across:

Shared hosting is perfect for entry-level website hosting. This is where your website will be stored on the same server as multiple other websites. With a shared hosting plan, all domains share the same server resources, such as RAM (Random Access Memory) and CPU (Central Processing Unit). However, because all resources are shared, the cost of shared hosting plans are relatively low, making them an excellent option for website owners in their beginning stages.

In most cases, beginners will find shared the simplest method of hosting their website; so regardless of whether youre a small business owner, a community group, or a stay-at-home mom with a desire to blog, your site will be accessible on the web. Shared hosting plans often comes with many helpful tools, and you can easier end up with bonus services such as the best website builder tools, the best WordPress hosting, and the ability to email clients.

Although shared hosting provides website owners with a more simplistic approach to the web, the trade-off is that youre sharing the server with multiple other website owners. This means that surges in usage can ultimately affect your websites user experience.

Shared hosting plans are ideal for website owners that do not receive a large amount of web traffic.

A VPS hosting plan is the ultimate middle ground between a shared server and a dedicated server. Its ideal for website owners that need more control, but dont necessarily need a dedicated server.

VPS hosting is unique because each website is hosted within its own space on the server, though it still shares a physical server with other users. While VPS hosting provides website owners with more customization and storage space, theyre still not able to handle incredibly high traffic levels or spikes in usage meaning that the site performance can still be affected by other sites on the server

Typically, VPS hosting is used by website owners who want dedicated hosting but dont have the technical knowledge needed. VPS hosting offers the cost benefits of shared hosting with the control of dedicated hosting. A great choice for advanced users and those that want specific software and package installations.

Dedicated hosting gives website owners the most control over the server that their website is stored on. Thats because the server is exclusively rented by you and your website is the only one stored on it. This means that you have full root and admin access, so you can control everything from security to operating system that you run.

However, all that control comes with a price.

Dedicated servers cost are one of the most expensive web hosting options. Typically, they are used by website owners with high levels of website traffic, and those who are in need of complete control of their servers. In addition, a high level of technical expertise is required for the installation and ongoing management of the server.

Cloud hosting is the current buzzword of the technology industry. In regards to web hosting, it means many computers working together, running applications using combined computing resources. Its a hosting solution that works via a network and enables companies to consume computing resource like a utility.

This allows users to employ as many resources as they need without having to build and maintain their own computing infrastructure. The resources that are being used are spread across several servers, reducing the chance of any downtime due to a server malfunction.

Cloud-based hosting is scalable, meaning your site can grow over time, using as many resources as it requires and while the website owner only pays for what they need.

Many hosts now use cloud architecture and use it to package traditional style hosting plans like shared and VPS. These 'cloud shared' and 'cloud VPS' plans provide basically the same amount of resources as the standard shared or VPS but with a bit more flexibility.

Most hosting packages you will find online are likely to be managed. Hosting companies provide technical services such as hardware and software setup and configuration, maintenance, hardware replacement, technical support, patching, updating and monitoring. With managed hosting, the provider looks after the day-to-day management of the hardware, operating systems and standardised applications.

Although there are many different options to choose from when it comes to web hosting, it all comes down to choosing a plan that fits your needs. Each plan caters to the specifications of different groups and realizing what your needs in a website are will help you ensure that youre choosing the right plan for you and your business.

Instead of keeping servers in-house or at a private data centre, you may choose to co-locate your equipment by renting space in a colocation centre. The centre will provide the power, bandwidth, IP address and cooling systems that your server requires. Space is rented out in racks and cabinets.

Colocation gives access to higher levels of bandwidth than a normal office server room at a much lower cost. Youre left to your own devices (literally) and will be expected to take care of everything including the hardware, software and services.

Although there are many different options to choose from when it comes to the best web hosting, it all comes down to choosing a plan that fits your needs. Each plan caters to the specifications of different groups and realizing what your needs in a website are will help you ensure that youre choosing the right plan for you and your business.

The crucial factors that you should keep in mind when selecting a web host include the type of website you have, the resources you need, your budget, and expected traffic. Heres a quick overview of the advantage of each type of hosting:

Shared Hosting: The most cost-effective option for low traffic websites.

Managed Hosting: Ideal for non-technical users whod rather defer the more technical tasks to experts.

VPS Hosting: Simply put, this is the best option for websites that have outgrown shared hosting.

Cloud Hosting: Works best for websites that are growing rapidly and need scalable resources.

Dedicated Hosting: Expensive option for large websites where you need to be in control.

Colocation Hosting: The most expensive option that gives you maximum control over the hardware and software.

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What are the different types of web hosting? - TechRadar

In looking for the most intriguing topics to address related to cloud for 2023, I began by exploring what were the most significant challenges for cloud technologies and found that one of the most repetitively stated challenges related to security and maintaining data integrity (Fig. 1). Data breaches remain one of the most significant threats facing cloud computing today.

What did I find in my search? Most reports predicted that cybercriminals would continue to target the cloud as a means of gaining access to sensitive information. Summarily, the kinds of sensitive information included customer data, financial records and proprietary business intelligence.

Figuratively, most organizations today operate to some degree in the cloud. While employing the cloud simplifies operations in many ways, this comes with its own set of risks that can significantly impact the bottom line for enterprise and similar scaled organizations. From a report published by Lookout, an IBM Security Cost of a Data Breach Report (prepared in 2021), found that the average cost of a public cloud breach was $4.8 million.

The Challenges A significant grouping of priorities related to IT initiatives now involve cloud services and tools, automation and DevOpswhich continually evolve as leaders seek to unlock new efficiencies from the front office to the back and every space between. The findings of a CyberArk report recently issued suggested that this technology adoption rate will see a 2.4x growth in human and machine resources, which is coupled with a 68% increase in the deployment of SaaS tools for such services.

This surely means that utilizing the cloud for operational activities is essential, as when trying to build out the scale of similar services on-prem (including construction, supporting and managing) is found to be many times more costly. Furthermore, of the many elements incorporated into developing a SaaS environment or their application is that of creating a set of secure authentication steps.

Creating identities that can authenticate the human user(s) and/or the machine(s) involved, can be automated in the cloud, which will significantly reduce the hands-on requirements otherwise required for upkeep, deployment and maintenance. The growing number of SaaS activities businesses must address in the digital future will be highly dependent upon these evolving cloud services.

What Can We Expect? Trending technologies in 2023 included the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, Kubernetes and docker. With many of those technologies already in place and in full use, we can expect other new technologies such as quantum computing, cloud gaming, augmented and virtual reality coming forth in the near term/upcoming years.

What will cloud computing be like in 2024? Expect a nonstop evolution of new capabilities enhanced by consumer growth, automation, virtuality and more.

Despite these advances, the top challenges expected in cloud computing seem to remain almost the same as they were in previous near-term years (i.e., that last three to five years). We distinguish cloud computing as characterized by those processes and components associated with deploying computing services, such as servers, storage, software, analytics, databases, networking and intelligence. Such services rely upon deployment, and of operations over the internet, which characteristically offers flexible resources, faster innovation and economies of scale.

Data Security and Privacy At the top of the challenges chart (Fig. 2) continues to be that of data security and privacy (including customer trust).

Not unexpected in this group is the challenge of password security and protection. Try as we might with multifactor authentication (MFA), people still dont fully understand or recognize the importance of having a secure, unique and protected password. A 14-character, mixed alpha+numeric+special-character password is essential when working within any compute environment, including the cloud. Continually changing your passwordwhile time-consumingis an effective (and essential) part of maintaining that security.

We note that not all cloud providers can assure 100% data privacy, so users should understand the values in privacy and security protection (see Fig. 3 for validation). Another methodology to protect your data privacy is to routinely install and implement the latest software updates, especially on the network hardware and configure those components properly and fully.

Cybersecurity compliance includes certain compliance processes and ensures that the provider(s) meet industry standards, regulations, legislationincluding international policies and procedures. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework and ISO 27001 are both excellent guidelines for the prevention of cyberattacks and compliance. Even if you dont believe youll be working internationally, you should still follow such guidelines as data may indeed cross over to those parts of the world without you knowing it.

Multicloud Environments Given the growing number of cloud service providers, users will be expecting to work amongst more than one cloud platform, even sometimes to support the same applications or activity. A multiple public cloud services environment includes services provided from different vendors within one architecture at the same time. For instance, a business might use AWS for data storage, Google Cloud Platform for development and testing, and then Microsoft Azure for disaster recovery.

We also hear the term multicloud computing. Fundamentally, there are three main types of cloud computing: public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud. Today, using one or more of these is not uncommon. (I discussed multimedia cloud and hybrid cloud uses and values in my October 2021 column, Evolution of Multimedia Cloud; my February 2022 column, Cloud Production for Media, and December 2023 column on Hybrid Cloud Choices.)

A private cloud is one built, usually by the owner, for its own independent uses and it most likely would be built on-prem. Public clouds have the most familiar and recognizable cloud service naming with provisions from Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and others.

Each of these public offerings differs in varying ways and can offer hybrid cloud services and migration paths from one platform to another. Be sure to crosscheck the capabilities from each vendors offerings when developing a cloud architecture for your uses.

Performance, Reliability and Availability Interoperability, flexibility and performance are another set of challenges but possibly less expected are the performance and reliability/availability of the services to, from and within the cloud. Transferring large data sets (volumes) between cloud data servers depends upon sufficient internet bandwidth, which is a common problem.

On the topic of availabilityas with any internet service providergetting to (or from) the host is usually a core bottleneck concern that is essentially out of the users control. And of course, once in the (public) cloud a user is now in a somewhat hands off world where the internal architecture of the cloud is something that you can only minimally affectand are often determined by the SLAs written into the cloud agreement.

What are the Drawbacks? A more serious and probably obvious challenge will be the lack of knowledge. Finding the appropriate cloud talent is another common challenge when maneuvering the cloud computing environment.

As workloads increase through cloud dependencies, so do the number of tools available to global users. Enterprises, regardless of size, need strong expertise in order to properly utilize a growing set of tools and capabilities in the cloud. The solution here is to use/hire cloud professionals who have DevOps and automation specializations and experience.

Karl Paulsen is a frequent TV Tech contributor who has been writing about storage, the cloud and media solution technologies for the past three decades. He can be reached at karl@ivideoserver.tv.

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What Will Cloud Computing Be Like in 2024? - TV Technology

Fujitsus decision to stop bidding on public sector contracts until the conclusion of the public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, in which the Japanese supplier is implicated, is the right thing for the company to do. However it does not absolve the firm in any way, and there are still many unanswered questions that Fujitsu needs to address.

Paul Patterson, the European director at Fujitsu, admitted to MPs recently the company had remotely accessed the Horizon terminals of sub-postmasters, which is something that had long been denied by everyone in charge.

Former Fujitsu UK CEO Duncan Tait has even since admitted that he described Horizon as Fort Knox to the then Post Office boss, Paula Vennells, which begs the question: how could Fujitsus reassurances have gone unchallenged for so long? There is understandable incredulity that the Fujtisu Horizon software system is still in use and partly funded by taxpayers. The reality is that, as a country, we remain stuck with Horizon until 2025 - because it has proven to be too old, too complex, and too bespoke to move to the cloud. Horizon is a creature of its time, and clearly never built on the open standards and interoperability that are the mantras for technological choice and flexibility today.

And it is hardly surprising - in the wake of the Post Office scandal - that people are asking questions about Fujitsu and why it remains a strategic supplier to government - and one of an elite few that can boast huge annual revenues as a result of its dealings with the UK government. The reasons for Fujitsus ongoing success in the public sector marketplace are complex. Many contracting authorities are locked into proprietary technology like Horizon that cannot be modernised, for one thing.

Despite a concerted effort to improve its commercial and technical skills, the government does not yet have all the resources it needs to move away from its outdated systems - or to modernise and reform its supply base. Government set out on its journey to the cloud with optimism more than a decade ago, thinking cloud would be the silver bullet that would release it from the grip of companies like Fujitsu. Cloud would be consumed as a commodity and cloud providers jettisoned on a whim. In fact, the reverse has proven to be the case. Many cloud platforms share some of Horizons characteristics. Notably proprietary technology (that when coupled with exit penalties) can lock customers into the platform in perpetuity. Ironically, the cloud platform the Post Office tried and failed to migrate Horizon to was one of these proprietary platforms. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is currently investigating the impact of cloud provider lock-in, be that through proprietary technology, exit penalties, discounts based on term/volume commitments or unfair software licensing practices.

Despite the CMA investigation, two of the worlds major cloud vendors, Microsoft and Amazon, are deemed strategic suppliers to government. Between them, both companies have amassed public sector cloud hosting contract spend to the tune of billions of pounds. None of this business has been competed. The net result is a cloud monoculture made up of Microsoft and Amazon, meaning much of the nations most critical and sensitive data now resides on their platforms. Most of the economic benefit of the governments ever-increasing cloud spend will go off-shore to the detriment of the UKs own cloud hosting industry.

Above all, the monoculture also amounts to a single point of failure that could have catastrophic consequences if subjected to a major cyber or physical attack. This is not a call to the Luddites to come out and smash up the looms. We need cloud. We need its agility and scale in this ever more data-driven world. Government mostly made a mess of buying its legacy systems and its making a mess of buying cloud. This is a plea to the government not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

It needs to ensure its data-driven digital markets are resilient, vibrant, diverse and competitive and it needs to ensure that its officials are properly equipped to support such a market. Because the next shiny new thing on the horizon is artificial intelligence (AI).

No supplier should ever be allowed to have a monopoly on AI in any sector. The prospect of an unaccountable AI becoming the next Horizon, with its lies, cover-ups and destruction of lives and livelihoods, is terrifying.

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The Post Office Scandal: Drawing parallels between Horizon and the UK cloud market - ComputerWeekly.com

Though a small Southeast Asian nation with a population of 5.45 million, Singapore has long voiced its big ambitions to stand at the forefront of global technological innovation, including AI.

Supported by its partners Google Cloud, The Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), Digital Industry Singapore (DISG), Smart Nation Group (SNG) and Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG), the country launched the first Trailblazers initiative in July 2023 to help local organizations identify real-world challenges that can be addressed with generative AI.

Singapore was one of the first countries to introduce a National AI Strategy, and as part of a plan set by deputy prime minister Lawrence Wong last year, the nation is acting to triple its pool of AI experts to 15,000, including machine-learning scientists and engineers.

Singapore is also preparing to host AI Trailblazers 2.0, the second of this kind initiative to cultivate a vibrant ecosystem of AI startups and encourage the creation of a sustainable pipeline of AI talent.

Since its inception, Trailblazers has addressed over 100 GenAI use cases from 84 organizations across government and industry. Building upon this progress, in the latest ExploreAI summit, hosted at the Google Asia Pacific campus, the group of leaders spotlighted 43 organizations that have successfully built their own GenAI solutions, with 22 organizations continuing to refine their solutions before graduating from the initiative.

AI Trailblazers 2.0, currently in preparation, is charged with helping up to 150 more organizations in Singapore rapidly build GenAI solutions to address their real-world challenges. This round will provide participating organizations with access to Singapores first GenAI Innovation Sandboxes, which allow participants to use Google Clouds unified AI stack consisting of high-performance AI-optimized infrastructure, in addition to its Vertex AI platform, foundation models and low-code developer tools, to assemble their own production-ready GenAI solutions.

We believe that the goal of GenAI adoption should be to improve each individuals effectiveness in their role by a certain percentage, Mark Micallef, managing director, Southeast Asia of Google Cloud tells ERP Today. By removing 20 to 25 percent of the drudgery work for a specific individual using GenAI, they will become more productive. Now, imagine how much more productive we could become as an economy and society if we do this at scale.

Micallef also voices the collective hope that GenAI will enhance labor productivity, create new jobs and democratize access to higher-paid occupations as it helps automate routine tasks and some non-routine cognitive tasks, so we must have a training system that continuously creates a ladder of opportunity for workers from all backgrounds, he adds.

Google Cloud has become the Singapore governments partner of choice for advancing GenAI adoption across the public and private sectors. This is thanks to Google Clouds AI-optimized infrastructure (resource-efficient supercomputing chips purpose-built to handle GenAI workloads) installed in its cloud data center in Singapore. Vertex AI will also deliver an end-to-end AI development platform for organizations to build and deploy GenAI solutions responsibly.

Philbert Gomez, vice president and head of Digital Industry Singapore, says that the AI Trailblazers initiative has already seen increased numbers of development and adoption of GenAI among companies based in Singapore.

These efforts will contribute to Singapores ambition of becoming a hub for AI innovation. With the success of the first AI Trailblazers initiative, we look forward to continuing this partnership with Google Cloud and will announce further details on AI Trailblazers 2.0 soon, Gomez, shares.

The country first set its AI ambition in 2019 as part of its National AI Strategy focused on deepening the use of AI to transform its economy when early investment in AI led to the establishment of about 150 teams working on research and development and 900 startups exploring new ideas with AI. Since then, the nation has seen significant breakthroughs in the sector with government-funded projects in areas like healthcare, education, safety and security committing more than $350m to AI research and development.

At present, predictive AI and analytical AI have been deployed across public services in Singapore, such as adaptive learning systems in schools, chronic health management systems in hospitals, immigration and customs clearance and in detection and deterring of online scams. Over 80 AI research faculties and 1,100 AI startups are also headquartered in the country.

Complementing the rest of these efforts, Google Cloud and EnterpriseSG recently launched a first-of-its-kind public-private startup program, Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First Singapore, designed to nurture and support globally-oriented innovators using GenAI as the core technology to build their products. The program is targeting to cultivate 100 high-potential AI startups over the next three years and scale the reach of their products into new markets.

As the adoption of AI technologies gains momentum, it is important for Singapore to nurture a thriving AI ecosystem with startups that can push the boundaries in this field with innovations, says Soh Leng Wan, assistant CEO of EnterpriseSG. Our AI ecosystem can also serve to offer its AI expertise to uplift the growth and capabilities of wider industries.

As part of the program scheduled to kick off in April 2024, selected startups are to receive technology and resources to fast-track the development and commercialization of proprietary products using GenAI.

Some of the resources available to assist them include up to $350,000 in Google Cloud credits upon graduation from the program, mentorship and technical project support from Googles product development teams, as well as the opportunity to showcase their achievements and connect with potential investors at a demo day.

In a bid to rapidly address the growing demand for AI skills, Google also announced that it is extending an additional 3,000 Google Career Certificate scholarships to local distribution partners with a focus on upskilling mid-career professionals, bringing its total commitment to 13,000 scholarships.

Google Cloud has also been collaborating with three Singaporean educators Institute of Technical Education (ITE), Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) and Temasek Polytechnic (TP) to complement these schools curricula in cloud technology with the Google Cloud Computing Foundations value-added program and introductory level microlearning courses in GenAI.

This approach to building local GenAI knowledge is not strictly individual, meaning that the same strategies could apply to every other country beyond Singapore. What we have achieved in partnership with the Singapore government in the past eight months has now become the blueprint for our work in other Southeast Asian markets, such as Malaysia and Thailand, Micallef says.

With these efforts, Singapore is pursuing its AI goals with full gusto, and looks set to secure its place as a key player in the AI industry. Any bets on the next country to follow suit?

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Singapore ups its AI strategy with Google Cloud collaboration - ERP Today

Google is teaming up with HSBC to make it easier for climate tech companies that run their infrastructure on the internet search giants cloud platform to access financial support.

The partnership will see members of the Google Cloud Ready Sustainability (GCR-Sustainability) programme offered access to HSBCs climate tech-focused finance team, as part of a push by the banking giant to deploy $1bn of climate tech finance.

HSBC will seek financing options for companies within the GCR-Sustainability ecosystem, as well as facilitating connections with HSBCs customer base, the companies said, in a joint statement.

Launched a year ago, GCR-Sustainability is a validation scheme for climate tech companies that use Google Cloud to host their offerings, which are designed to help enterprises reduce their carbon emissions, improve the sustainability of their supply chains and identify climate risks.

Google said its goal is to increase the number of partners signed up to the programme over the next two years, and help more of them explore venture debt financing options with HSBCs help.

Natalie Blyth, global head of commercial banking sustainability at HSBC, said solving the climate crisis means finding new ways to support green tech companies so they can scale-up.

Partnerships and innovative financing solutions are key, especially during a period when investment in climate tech startups has fallen, she said. By combining financing support, cloud technologies and connectivity to partners across our combined footprints, we will help climate tech vendors accelerate their growth, and develop the solutions we urgently need at scale.

Justin Keeble, managing director for global sustainability at Google Cloud, said accessing finance is a common struggle for many climate tech startups.

The scale of climate challenge requires a global ecosystem of technology providers bringing solutions that drive impact. This is why we launched our Google Cloud Ready - Sustainability ecosystem which one year in includes leading climate tech companies, he said. Many of these partners need access to finance and we are excited to partner with HSBC to support firms key to climate action.

One of the first beneficiaries of the collaboration is a company called LevelTen Energy, which specialises in the provision renewable transaction infrastructure for use by companies in the clean energy economy. According to the company, it has to-date facilitated over $5bn in clean energy transactions.

We are proud to be a GCR-Sustainability-validated company and are looking forward to working closely with the team at HSBC, it said.

Ross Trenary, chief financial officer of LevelTen, said the company is looking forward to working closely with HSBC to accelerate its future growth.

This venture debt package will enable us to scale our platform, which provides transaction infrastructure for carbon-free energy buyers, sellers and financiers, said Trenary.

HSBCs global reach aligns with our international presence, while giving us opportunities to connect with HSBC clients that are looking to achieve sustainability goals.

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HSBC and Google Cloud partner up for climate tech startup growth push - ComputerWeekly.com