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By: Angela Cook on August 25, 2021

Cloud Scalability: What Is It & How Can It Help Your Business?

Cloud Scalability | Cloud Services

Over the last year, several companies have taken advantage of the flexibility and productivity that working in the cloud provides. The cloud has made working remotely or in a hybrid environment much more manageable than relying on physical hardware to complete a job.

However, within the world of cloud computing, there is often confusion about how much information can be stored. That’s where cloud scalability comes.

At LDI, our cloud services team works with prospects and customers alike to evaluate their current workflow to see where it can be optimized and streamlined. We recommended optimal cloud solutions for companies requiring more data storage, office productivity, and seamless communication and collaboration.

This article will detail what cloud scalability means and even provide two common examples. We will also break down why it matters and how it can help your business. By the end of this article, you will clearly understand how cloud scalability can impact your business.

 

What Is Cloud Scalability? 

Cloud scalability or scaling is a term used within cloud computing that refers to the increase or decrease of resources such as data storage, capacity, processing power, and your network as needed to meet the demands of your business and industry.

These resources refer to cloud services, systems, and applications that are used for day-to-day business operations to maintain availability and performance as utilization increases.

Cloud scalability enables these resources to be easily scaled up or scaled-down. What does this mean? Well, let’s break it down even further.

A system’s scalability, as described above, refers to its ability to increase workload with existing hardware resources. A scalable solution provides stable, longer-term growth, in a pre-planned manner.

For example, suppose your web application gets featured on a popular news channel. Suddenly, thousands of visitors are now using your application, however, you’re unsure if your infrastructure can handle all of its new traffic.

Ensuring that your web application is scalable, can handle the load, and does not crash is imperative. An application that crashes and loads slowly will leave your users frustrated and more likely to not use your application again.

 

What Are 2 Examples Of Cloud Scalability?

When talking about cloud scalability, two standard ways of scaling are horizontal or vertical.

Let’s go a bit deeper into these terms.

Horizontal Scaling

Horizontal scaling involves scaling out or in, which refers to adding or taking away several services, systems, or applications.

For example, suppose your company requires a higher-performing CPU (central processing unit) to process more demanding applications. In that case, horizontal scaling would help add additional resources within your current cloud server to do so.

Vertical Scaling

Vertical scaling entails scaling up or down, which alludes to the power and capacity of a particular resource.

A prime example is a website running on a 9-CPU virtual machine that gets redeployed to a 17-CPU virtual asset. This upgrade can positively impact the speed at which the website is accessed and can improve the overall user experience.

 

How Does Cloud Scalability Work?

Over the past decade, cloud computing has radically changed the way companies set up their IT infrastructure and perform their daily operations. With more companies migrating their operations to the cloud, scalability has become one of the remaining factors in this widespread cloud migration trend.

Virtualization is what makes scalability in cloud computing possible. But what is virtualization?

Virtualization refers to virtual assets like servers, desktops, operating systems, storage devices, and other resources within one’s network infrastructure.

While virtual assets can be transferred to another server or hosted on several different servers simultaneously, a giant virtual machine may be necessary if you have a bulk of workloads and applications that need to be run. These virtual assets are unlike physical machines, whose capabilities are relatively fixed. Virtual machines are flexible and can be scaled in, out, up, or down to meet the needs of your business.

 

How Can Cloud Scalability Help Your Business?

A scalable cloud solution can prepare your business to react effectively depending on the likely increase or decrease of traffic and workload conditions. This can help your business acclimate its storage capacity and computing power to enhance overall system performance.

Data storage that’s restricted due to physical hardware can impede expanding one’s current IT infrastructure. With the cloud, there are no limits when it comes to the size of your server environment.

Scalability can help your IT environment grow flexible enough to deliver the exact amount of storage capacity and computing power you require. Especially as business needs continually change and grow, cloud scalability provides a streamlined option to respond quickly to spikes in demand. Luckily, companies do not have to be tied down to the hardware they have and can instead update systems and increase power as well as storage with ease.

 

Is Cloud Scalability Right For Your Business?  

With data being a primary driver for business optimization, cloud migration has become a practical next step for many companies. Within cloud migration comes the streamlined process of scalability.

If your business is looking to employ a scalable business model that can enable them to grow quickly while meeting ever-changing demands, cloud scalability can provide your business with the advantage it needs to stay flexible and competitive.

LDI can help transform your business with scalable space to run your applications smoothly, along with storing and backing up your data.

Learn more about various cloud solutions today that you may have not been aware of:

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