Why the cloud?
In recent years, many companies have chosen to move their web services to the cloud — generally meaning a public cloud provider such as AWS or GCP. Moving to the cloud offers many benefits, including:
• Ability to move spending from CapEx (self-hosting) to OpEx (cloud)
• Infinitely scalable — usually automatically
• Easier to acquire talent thanks to certification and other programs
• Wider geographic coverage (cloud providers operate worldwide)
• Being on the vanguard of the latest technology (serverless, NoSQL, etc.)
Fully embracing the cloud and all related technology makes these benefits easily accessible. However, if you don’t change your application to use cloud technology (in other words, if you perform a ‘lift and shift’), operating your application may cost even more in the cloud than if you continue to operate it yourself. After all, the cloud provider needs to buy the same hardware, operate the same network equipment, pay for the same power and connectivity and make a profit on top of it.
Many organizations choose to use a cloud provider for scaling and growth. Having the ability to immediately add capacity to any service is often mission critical. Plus, you don’t need to worry about finding and installing hardware, or (if done correctly) manually scaling your application to handle more traffic.