Will cloud computing solutions replace dedicated server hosting? Well, this question you might have seen on many websites and it is obvious because everyone is talking about it as more companies’ even start-ups are using or willing to use cloud solutions. So is this the way the IT industry is headed?
In my personal opinion – NO
Most of the authors’ opinions are actually based on Gartner’s predictions; a leading technology research company. If you read articles based on their research you will see a massive amount of companies are shifting from dedicated servers to cloud computing. But there are certain applications and use cases that will require dedicated hardware for a while, for example, banking systems.
Though cloud computing solutions will take place on most dedicated servers over time, it will not completely put it back. There will always be a certain niche market for dedicated servers.
The fact is cloud services are likely to provide flexibility “service on demand”, whereas dedicated servers are likely to provide a specific and consistent performance. Cloud services have a tendency to lack in certain areas where high disk I/O is required, for example, relational databases.
If you would like to know the real trend of the current industry then look closer, you will see the industry trend is moving in the direction of “Hybrid Hosting Solution”, a combination of the two. Virtual and physical hardware come together to provide the next generation of high-performance hosting options.
Just imagine, a database cluster running on physical servers to give you the high-performance disk I/O, connected on a private VLAN to flexible web heads that you can turn up and down as required to manage heavy traffic bursts.
So what we will see in the future?
More and more beginners will deploy their services on the public cloud which obviously runs on dedicated servers on the back end. And large enterprises will mostly deploy their services on a private cloud; a fancy word for virtualized infrastructure management. But physical servers will always be there unless someone invents a magical solution that can run in the middle of a rain cloud in the sky.