The Difference Between Cloud and Hosted Services
The difference between cloud and hosted services is the location of the servers running the service. “Hosted services” is the general term for technology services using infrastructure located outside the service receiver’s physical location. This can be at the vendor’s physical location or can be hosted on the cloud. “Cloud services” refers to a specific subset of hosted services that utilize a “cloud” vendor.
What are Hosted Services?
“Hosted services” is the general term for technology services with infrastructure located outside the recipient’s physical location. The servers facilitating this service may be on-site at the vendor’s physical location—these are considered “traditional” hosted services—or maybe on the cloud. Cloud-hosted solutions mean the infrastructure is located at a cloud vendor’s data center.
A traditional hosted services provider owns and operates the infrastructure at a private location. These hosted services are accessed by the customer through a direct network connection, such as a virtual private network (VPN), remote desktop, etc.).
Hosted services can include anything from email to SaaS, storage, monitoring, and more. The infrastructure that supports hosted services includes software, network capacity, storage, hardware, servers, and networking components. This infrastructure is used to deliver services to offsite clients.
There is a wide range of hosted services available. Common examples of common hosted services include:
- Software (SaaS)
- Website hosting
- File hosting
- Security
- Virtual server hosting
What are Cloud Services?
Cloud services are a subset of hosted services specifically hosted on the cloud. This means the hardware, network, storage, and composite solutions are from a cloud vendor.
One important differentiator of this classification of hosted services is that these resources are distributed and delivered to multiple users simultaneously. A private server hosted by a vendor and accessed by a client via VPN, then, would not qualify as cloud hosting since the service itself is non-collaborative.
Examples of common cloud hosting services include:
- Cloud computing
- Software (SaaS)
- Cloud desktops
- Cloud storage
Benefits of Cloud Services
The biggest benefit of cloud services compared to traditional hosted services is the scalability of solutions while remaining relatively affordable. With cloud services, the expenses related to the equipment and maintenance of the data center is spread across hundreds, thousands, or even millions of other clients.
Cloud services are usually incredibly scalable since it doesn’t take the implementation of additional resources or servers for a cloud vendor to accommodate increasing data needs. It only takes allocating additional data to the client.
Cloud services are also more likely to be up-to-date in speed and security measures than traditional hosted solutions. Since cloud vendors rely on a large number of clients to drive revenue, they must take extra care to ensure the safety and security of their client’s information. This is often one of the best ways to ensure your technology is protected from potential threats.
Learn More
Would you like to learn more about how cloud services may speed up the speed and reliability of your hosted services, helping to increase your business productivity and security? Contact Network Coverage today for a free cloud assessment.