Cloud vs Server for Application Development [close

Question

What are the benefits of using a Cloud Service over a normal server setup? It's a given that i may benefit from a distributed server setup (The cloud) and maybe cost. But am i really missing out on any capabilities by not using a cloud service? If anything cloud computing is rather limited.

For example the Azure service not all of the .Net Framework assemblies are available to the developer.

There has been a lot of hype with Push and data synchronization technologies recently, and they seem to be sold as something that can only be done with cloud services. There's nothing baked into Cloud Services that enables Push or Syncing right? The developer still needs to write the apps and it host it on the Cloud. If so, then why not use a normal server setup?

Forgive me if i am talking total nonsense, but i am trying read beyond the marketing hypea dn try to understand the real limitations/benefits of using a Cloud and what business benefits it can bring.

Answer 1

The greatest advantage ever is that cloud hosing grants you with time, room for innovation and what is more cares about the money you pay. Cloud platform runs and scales your application and enables the user to roll back in time in case if something goes wrong with the app. For customers needs cloud platform utilizes and adjusts all the services and provides features adaptable for your ever-changing business demands. It is really an advantage to experience these innovations. From my perspective today’s cloud hosting is blooming with:

1.Windows Azure

2.Amazon EC2

3.Jelastic

4.Rackspace Cloud Hosting

Answer 2

You can actually gain the benefit of Cloud service while still deploying your own server configuration. This is called the Infrastructure as service unlike Application as service that Google AppEngine and Azure offered. One of the player in this area is Amazon.

Answer 3

What are the benefits of using a Cloud Service over a normal server setup?

First and foremost, the terms "cloud computing" should be used in the right context. Its often mistakenly or interchangeably used to denote PaaS - SaaS service modes too.

Often cloud solutions are marketed for reduced OPEX (operational costs) but the real advantage is

• Elastic Nature
• On demand Provisioning
• Measurement of services provided
• ready to use load balancers, CDN etc which certain IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
• resources pooled over a network, often running on vitalized environment

Further classifications can be done as:

PaaS, SaaS - based on the service delivery mode.

classification based on the deployment / architecture also can be done:

Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud etc.

In general or the most common translation of cloud computing is virtualized environment which can scale rapidly on demand. Now, unless the properties described above are not needed, a traditional server will be more than enough. An example could a news portal may need rapid scaling & cloud solution will be a good match but a company web site may not be a good fit for a cloud deployment.