Choosing the right breed of web hosting could be mind-boggling for a beginner. Web hosting services allow individuals or organizations to own a piece of space on the World Wide Web. Companies called Web Hosts, provide space on a server they own or lease, for their clients. With Dedicated hosting, the client leases an entire server and does not to share it with others. This would be more flexible when compared to other types of hosting, since here the organization has complete control over the selection of operating system, hardware, etc. with the hosting company providing add-on services like server administration. These servers are found to be housed in data centers and the server hardware owned by the provider. Most hosting companies would hire support teams for round the clock assistance of each client’s operating system and applications.

With the help of a dedicated server, you remove all of the third-party risks. You pay for a server and it is entirely yours. Though you pay the same amount each month regardless of the number of resources you use, traditional servers could be quite expensive. When you own a dedicated server, you need to pay fixed rentals. Since a website may not get the same amount of hits each day of the month, clients would choose not to overpay for their use of dedicated servers just because they receive more traffic a few days per month. So nowadays most users prefer to ‘pay for only what they use’.

Cloud hosting follows usage based billing so that clients would have to pay extra only for those days that handle more traffic. Though cloud computing has been around for sometime, many of us do not realize that we are part of its user group. With Google, IBM, Amazon etc now entering the cloud business, it gets even tougher for small scale hosting providers. But hosting, as we know it, is not all about assigning servers, networks, clouds and others that holds the infrastructure. It is more about providing a service to your customer and when it comes to support; dedicated servers are found to be more helpful to their clients.All it takes is a phone call to the support team and the web hosting company deals with the bug right away.

But cloud hosting companies do not provide the same level of support, since it is harder to trace a problem in cloud computing model setup and most of the companies lack the maturity to provide truly professional services yet. Though the verdict is not final, since cloud hosting companies are becoming more competent day by day, improving their performance on support related issues; it will not be the death of traditional hosting any time soon. But if you are not that experienced in server management, dedicated server hosting would be the right pick for your organization in the current scenario of hosting. Since no industrial standards have been clearly defined for the role in server management by the providers, each provider would come up with different techniques and they define their level of management as per the services.

What makes cloud hosting possible is that the website is hosted on server clusters and not limited to a single server. This enables the website with access to the processing capabilities of multiple servers distributed in real time. It eliminates the problem of a single physical machine not only becoming a single point of failure but also the limited capacity to handle finite traffic, decreasing the availability of your website. Cloud hosting benefits the users as the technology is highly scalable and cost efficient. The hosted website could be expanded whenever the client requires it, without any shortage in server resources.

For any organization, that has to face a sudden surge of traffic hitting on their website on any given day should not lead to a server crash. The scalability of cloud hosting makes it possible to handle such situations with ease. The pay per use facility is what makes cloud hosting highly cost efficient, with companies charging their users based only on the quantity of computing power used. So now clients do not have to reserve high server powers that mostly go to waste and server usage is supplied on demand.

For better understanding of its functionality, the Cloud hosting setup is divided into two sections, the Front end that includes the client’s computer or computer network and the application that is required to establish a connection with the cloud system and the Back end comprises of servers, data storage units, computers that make up the “cloud” side. The two sections are connected via a network and the user interface provided in each cloud system may differ. A central server monitors all activities; it checks if the client demands are dealt with smoothly and takes on the central administration and traffic control. It makes use of middleware that lets the computers connected through its network to communicate and follow the apt protocols prescribed.

The need for sufficient storage space may pose a problem for hosting companies that handle a lot of potential clients. These companies would have to maintain hundreds of storage devices that hold the entire information of all clients and even keep a duplicate of these grave materials. So this means that companies need to have twice the amount of storage devices as actually needed to store all the info and this is critical since occasional breakdowns are quite normal, no client wants to lose valuable info and so does the web hosts.

The cloud setup is primarily of three types- Public cloud, Private cloud and Hybrid cloud. The public cloud also called external cloud is where resources are actively supplied in a well defined service via the internet. Private clouds are internal clouds that work on private networks of an organization and though it claims to be the cloud system that removes the shortcomings of cloud as in issues such as data security and reliability, it also does not provide all the benefits that cloud truly has to offer since corporate firms would have to spend a lot on owning and maintaining these clouds. Finally, Hybrid cloud defines combining a Plug computer, which is a local unit with the cloud hosting services and the environment comprising of several internal or external providers.

Cloud hosting services could be of use to any organization, from processing word documents to executing customized software designed specifically for a company. Why would an organization depend on a bunch of cloud computers that sits faraway for handling their applications and valuable data? Well the answer is that clients could access these programs from any part of the world. The software and data are not confined to the premises of a company and available to them any time, all they need is a computer that has access to the cloud system through the internet. To purchase advanced hardware that may cost your company a fortune would not be the wisest of decisions that your team makes, when cloud systems provide you with the best equipments that the industry has to offer today so now clients do not have to carry the extra baggage. Instead you could buy a network terminal that comparatively is much less expensive which only runs the middleware required to connect to the cloud side.

Cloud companies make sure that an organization has applications that run on the right software, relieving them of their job of buying new software each time. Servers and storage devices take up a lot of space and clients would have to rent additional room for these, but Cloud systems avoid physical space requirement on the front end and most importantly, having multiple computers at the back end, gives client applications enormous processing power. Calculations that might have taken hours for completion on a single client computer, being sent to a cloud system would require only a few minutes, substantially speeding up the entire process.

With the given benefits of cloud computing, replacing old server rooms with cloud services might be too hard to resist for many organizations. But rushing into cloud hosting without proper security strategies is like asking for trouble. How Google had to pay their toll for ignoring security issues in May 2009 could be quoted as the ultimate example. It seems that five percent of the total internet traffic on the World Wide Web accounts for Google services. So when Google had to suffer, so did many who relied on its applications to conduct business. It even set an example for hackers that if they actually wanted to give it a shot, they could take down any of the hosting giants.

Corporate officials take an enormous risk in handing over their valuable data and applications to cloud hosting companies and they would have to request the cloud systems to grant access to their own info through a user id and password combo. This causes pressure on both sides as the reputation of a cloud company is at stake, so security and privacy of the client’s data is given top priority and they make use of the latest techniques available. Authentication and authorization methods where the data relevant to each employee’s field are available to him, while the rest is hidden are usually applied by most providers. But hackers that use the key-logging program could figure out the id and password used by the client while logging into the cloud system, if he can manage to install the program onto the client’s computer.

The good news for cloud providers is that the key logging program is almost impossible to load into the client’s system, which is a network terminal. A new question that arises now is whether the cloud hosting company that stores all data of their clients has more authority over it than the clients themselves? What could organizations do if these companies ever denied access to their data? None of the law firms have come up with the right answers to these yet, though debates still carry on over this issue. The introduction of cloud hosting into industries could affect the need of IT maintenance employees in organizations, as the front end at the client would not require the same amount of IT professionals as it did earlier, so experts predict a shift of IT jobs from the organization side to the back end of the cloud system.

Mosso and GoGrid are two of the providers offering cloud hosting services. When it comes to reliability, cloud environment that works with simple asp.net appears to work just fine, though cloud hosting is a complicated environment. Mosso is found to have a Dirlo creation bug and this is expected to be taken care of by January or February of 2010. As far as the issue of network latency is concerned, companies like Amazon cloud provides ready to use services that works perfect for startups as well as established companies.

The services offered can be mainly classified into three categories- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). Amazon web which falls into the first category makes use of virtual servers having specific IP addresses and on demand storage facility, where customers could control the servers through the provider’s API. With Platform as a Service, clients could develop their own application making use of the API provided. Google Apps has made their name among the top Platform-as-a-Service providers. Software-as-a-Service has the widest range of applications, where Twitter, Face book and web based mail are some of the best examples. Here the user interacts with the cloud system through a user interface and they make use of the applications that the host provides.

As cloud hosting companies evolve, they learn new ways of adapting and providing their clients with the right services that they expect from them. Cloud hosting is becoming more like traditional dedicated server but with resources, performance and scalability that truly stands apart from its predecessors. When clients would have full root access to the server and the chosen operating system, with all the adequate support that they require from the company, cloud computing could undoubtedly impress most organizations with additional features and benefits that only cloud computing could offer. But until then, traditional hosting companies is expected to have their share in web hosting just as cloud.