Thanks to Cloud Elasticity, computing resources outsourced to the cloud can adapt to needs in real time. With this method, a company can cope with a temporarily high workload on its servers without having to purchase greater computing capabilities in the long term.
Cloud Elasticity gains popularity
More and more companies are outsourcing part of their computing capabilities to a cloud . Cloud Elasticity is the adaptability of the provision of resources in the data center as customer demand increases or decreases. This allows cloud resources, including compute, storage, and memory, to be quickly and dynamically allocated to respond to changing demands. Computing resources such as CPU/processing, memory, input/output bandwidth, and storage capacities can be increased or decreased as needed without disrupting system performance.
The objective of Cloud Elasticity is to avoid a deficit or excess of resources for a certain service or application . Overshoot (that is, allocating too many resources) leads to higher costs than necessary, while underfunding (allocating fewer resources) means that not all users will be able to access the service. In recent years, businesses have enjoyed the benefits of moving their software development services and infrastructure to the cloud. One of the main advantages is elasticity.
What is elasticity in cloud computing?
An elastic cloud service allows you to use more computing power and storage when it is needed and discard it when the extra capacity is no longer needed. The elasticity process must be fast and automatic. Delays in augmentation would lead to server overload and crashes. On the other hand, if a reduction is delayed, the servers would remain unused, wasting cloud resources. When a cloud provider adjusts resource allocation to dynamic workloads so that more or fewer resources can be occupied, the service is called an elastic cloud.
The faster a cloud provider can allocate different resources to dynamic customer needs, the more elastic its cloud services will be. This dynamic option offers enormous advantages. Before the era of cloud computing , sudden spikes in bandwidth and infrastructure demand were managed by scaling server and controller architecture. This method of managing peak demand required large upfront financial investments in hardware, data centers, power, and network bandwidth, to name a few.
With cloud hosting and the advantage of elasticity, this is no longer an issue as capacity is already accounted for and can be automatically increased or decreased as needed. This eliminates the financial and time costs associated with traditional expansion methods and an on-premise custom software development company infrastructure architecture.
What does Cloud Elasticity bring to companies?
Elasticity establishes a balance between performance and profitability. They then automatically analyze utilization versus resource allocation. The goal is always to match these two metrics to ensure that the system is performing at its maximum capacity at a favorable price. Cloud providers typically have a usage-based pricing model in their portfolio , where the company only pays for what is used. With the pay-as-you-go model, infrastructure components can be added to prepare for increased resources.
While scalability helps manage long-term growth, elasticity ensures seamless availability of services. It also helps avoid system overload or increased cloud costs due to excess resources. For cloud platforms, elasticity guarantees customer satisfaction. The system will remain smooth and high-performing at all times.
Advantages of Cloud Elasticity
- Easy Scalability: With on-demand computing resources, managed cloud hosting providers can quickly scale up the services and infrastructure they need to sustain business.
- Lower costs: Companies can reduce their expenses by avoiding investments in IT infrastructure. With Cloud Elasticity’s “pay-as-you-go” model, you are only charged for the resources consumed.
- Greater redundancy: With easy access to external IT resources, IT teams can take advantage of more flexible, reliable and cost-effective backup and recovery solutions.
- Easier management: With cloud services, IT teams no longer have to worry about provisioning, maintaining and updating individual parts of IT infrastructure.
- High availability and reliability: Resources are automatically provided in the background without the end user being aware.
- Greater agility: Elastic cloud makes IT infrastructure more agile and ready to attract new users and customers.
- Save time: By automatically provisioning and adapting resources, internal IT staff gain time to focus on their business’s core functions.
- Greater flexibility to changes in workload: Businesses no longer have to worry about their website suddenly becoming unavailable when traffic increases.
Cloud Elasticity Use Cases
The objective of elasticity in cloud computing is to guarantee that the allocated resources correspond to those actually needed at all times. This means that Cloud Elasticity is used where it is necessary to cover peaks in computing capacity .
eCommerce
eCommerce websites can celebrate events such as sales, promotions or the sale of special items that attract a much larger number of customers than usual. Cloud Elasticity helps suppliers allocate the right resources at times of high demand so customers can make purchases.
A company that organizes an anniversary sale or a Black Friday promotion has much more traffic and requests to the server at any given time. This places a much greater load on the servers than at other times of the year. With an elastic platform, more resources can easily be made available to absorb the increased demand during this period. Afterwards, the additional capabilities may become unused.
Customer Support
Industries with many customers also experience high activity during short periods of the year, for example when contracts change, conclude or cancel at the end or beginning of the year. When that time comes, a sharp increase in data traffic can be expected. Without elasticity, peak traffic would quickly overwhelm existing capacity and cause service outages. This would cause “server not available” messages for the user and, of course, would not give a good image of the company.
Thanks to the elasticity of the cloud, it is possible to manage demand in real time without customers noticing any change in performance. Furthermore, the respective cloud provider will only charge for the resources used and not for the number of virtual machines provided. After the customer rush, which typically lasts only a few weeks, virtual machines within the elastic cloud platform can be freed up again to reduce cloud expenses.
Conclusion: Cloud Elasticity saves resources and costs
Elasticity in the cloud gives custom software development services and organizations the ability to handle unexpected surges in demand without having to maintain backup teams to manage them. Cloud elasticity is a future-proof feature for IT infrastructure. It helps businesses stay operational during peak demand, improves flexibility and availability, and uses a more cost-effective “pay as you go” model. With the right cloud provider, you can take full advantage of elasticity in cloud computing without having to worry about provisioning, managing, or scaling cloud resources.
