Scaling Up: Cloud Scalability Demystified for SMBs

20 May 2024

The cloud is rapidly shaping the future of business, and for good reason. By integrating the cloud into your organisation, you gain numerous benefits, including the empowering ease of cloud scalability. This capability ultimately enhances your business’s flexibility, putting you in control of your growth trajectory.

From an external perspective, cloud scaling may appear daunting, with numerous factors to consider when transitioning to a new infrastructure. However, this is merely a perception, as the truth is that understanding the cloud is straightforward once you grasp its fundamentals. This reassurance should instil confidence in SMBs considering cloud scalability.

In this blog, we will delve into the intricacies of cloud scalability and the workings of various cloud services. This comprehensive understanding will equip you with the knowledge needed to navigate cloud scaling, ensuring there are no misunderstandings or misconceptions. We will also share some best practices to optimize your cloud scaling experience, leaving you feeling informed and prepared.

The Business Case for Scalable Cloud Solutions

In the modern world, technology allows businesses to grow to new heights. Adapting to new situations and the ever-changing business landscape is vital, and scalable cloud solutions are the best way to do this.

There are a few different ways that scalable cloud solutions can benefit your business:

Cost Reduction: Due to the nature of cloud computing, the initial capital expenditure of physical hardware is eliminated. However, this is also important when it comes to scalability. Traditionally, you’d have to buy new physical hardware to scale up your implementation, and you’d be stuck with that hardware if you wanted to scale down. Innate cloud scalability eliminates this problem, as you can scale in just a few clicks.
IT Resources: Scalable cloud solutions also remove the need for maintenance and other management, meaning that your resources can be used for other things instead of having someone maintain them.
Agility and Elasticity: A scalable cloud solution makes scaling simple, so you can easily scale to meet your needs. This means that you can accommodate fast growth, fluctuations in demand, and anything else that might require you to change your needs.
Cloud Benefits: The cloud also offers many other benefits, such as security and new technologies, which means that your organisation can take advantage of the power of cloud technology.

Understanding Different Cloud Service Models

There are generally three different types of cloud service models available, each with various benefits and drawbacks.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will provide the basic infrastructure of computing, such as virtual machines, storage, and networking. However, it allows you to configure your implementation, treating it like your own data centre. This is ultimately a more complex way of implementing the cloud into your organisation, but it comes with complete control of your implementation.

When it comes to scalability, IaaS is the most scalable model. Its configurable nature gives you complete flexibility and control over your setup. However, the tradeoff here is the apparent complexity of the IaaS model in comparison to the other models.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) gives you access to a whole platform for your cloud needs. Instead of just being an infrastructure to build yourself, it turns said infrastructure into a platform for your application development and deployment. With this, you can focus on the development side more than the infrastructural side.

With services like Microsoft Azure, PaaS services typically auto-scale to meet your needs and ensure you’re provisioning correctly. You set scaling rules, and Azure will do the rest.

Software as a Service (SaaS) provides complete applications ready to use over the Internet. For example, Microsoft 365 is filled with Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, and more software. It’s just a ready-made application for you to use rather than an infrastructure.

Of course, because of this, scalability is handled entirely by the service provider. You don’t need to worry about scaling, as the provider will ensure they have enough resources to meet demand.

Best Practices for Cloud Scalability

Here are some of the best practices for cloud scalability that you should consider regarding your cloud infrastructure —

Define needs: By clearly defining your organisation’s needs, you can have a clear idea of how to scale effectively. This will require an understanding and analysis of your organisation’s implementation.
Right-size: Right-sizing is the act of continuously monitoring your organisation’s utilisation and adjusting accordingly so you’re never paying for more than you need. This will save you lots in the long run, as you won’t be haemorrhaging resources where you could otherwise not pay for them.
Auto-scaling: Your cloud provider will generally have automatic scaling options, meaning you don’t need to worry about manually scaling. Instead, you can just let your provider handle that.
Standardisation: By standardising your cloud infrastructure and deployment system, you easily ensure that your organisation remains consistent and simplify the scaling process.
Testing: Regularly testing your application or infrastructure under load ensures that you’re provisioning enough and that your whole scaling strategy is effective.

How To Get Started

Scaling your cloud implementation is simple, and knowing how to do so correctly can benefit your organisation. The three different models of cloud services have different levels of scalability, though, and ensuring that you pick the right one for your organisation’s needs is vital to having a successful wider cloud adoption journey.

If you’re looking to start using the cloud in your business but don’t know how, contact us today. Our experts are here to help and will ensure you hit the ground running by adopting the cloud.

Get in touch now and see how we can help.

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