Cloud computing or Cloud hosting is a term that we all have been hearing for a long time now. A lot of people are talking about the advantages of this technology while there are others who are not so fond of Cloud hosting technology. In recent years, many companies including internet giants like Google, Facebook etc have come forward to use Cloud hosting and promote the technology.

Now, it is again making some noise in the internet industry. There are many common features which Cloud hosting shares with many of the existing internet technologies. In Cloud hosting, the users can access the data stored in the cloud with the normal web browsers we use or by using specific desktop or mobile applications. Every cloud hosting service provider is looking to give the clients a better experience than what they have come across until now.

As said earlier, there are many features you will find in cloud computing that you have seen in other computing technologies. These Cloud hosting systems are somewhat capable of self management which makes it closely related to autonomic computing. Client server model of computing is very familiar to anyone who is associated with the internet industry.

Several features of client server model of computing can be found in Cloud hosting method also. Since Cloud hosting uses large computers or group of computers to handle very large amount of data, one can also compare cloud hosting with mainframe computers. Cloud hosting also shares some properties with utility computing where the hosting services are offered on a metered basis. This means that in Cloud hosting, you pay for what you actually use.

While these are some features that Cloud hosting shares with other technologies, there are certain features which makes cloud hosting unique from others. The agility of flexibility in allocating resources is one feature which is quite unique to Cloud hosting. Here, you have the option to allocate more resources for the website when needed and reallocate them when not needed.

Virtualization is another feature of Cloud hosting. The virtual sharing of the resources available with different servers allows the services provider to share the resources between many clients. This reduces the need for extra hardware or maintenance. This also reduces the cost of operation which in turn reflects in the bill for the customers.

Since the data is accessed from a central storage, the maintenance of the server would also become easy to a great extent. These Cloud hosting services are highly reliable and a well placed architecture of it can ensure that you can access the data anytime you want without any issues and also, downtime will be minimal or almost nil.

Since the resources are shared between different server, the performance of the whole Cloud hosting architecture is something appreciated by many users. The only issue that is found in relation to Cloud hosting is the ones related to security and privacy. Since this is a shared platform, security concerns are sure to arise. However, one can expect this concern to be eliminated in the very near future.