Friends, past four week I have been writing on different topics of Cloud on various things. So far we have covered basics of cloud, understanding differences between on premise, Cloud and hosted environment. I have also explained different cloud service offerings like IaaS, PaaS, DBaaS etc. And last week I have explained about different cloud service providers. In this post, let’s see, should one adopt the cloud environment or not from SQL Server perspective.

Why should one adopt the cloud environment?

1. Scalability –

   This is the biggest advantage one will have. One can off course start from the lowest configuration from wide range of options offered by the service provide like Microsoft Azure or Amazon AWS and once one feel comfortable and want to move all database systems, backups and or application to the cloud environment as needed.  One can easily scale-up or scale-down the configuration whenever needed, it will be just few mouse clicks, it will that easy.

2. Economic –

   Yes, the it’s the economically beneficial for every organization, especially for small or SME segment. Let me tell you why I would say so, if you check the pricing you will find that it will be really small amount one will pay comparing to managing IT staff + Infrastructure + Licensing cost. One may want to review the pricing here and here.

3. Access from anywhere –

   One can access the database system as soon as one has the credential and have added to the access list or subscription list, through the portal.

4. Security –

   When it comes to security, one can really rely on the security offered from the service providers, it is explained well here and here.

5. Backups and Redundancy –

   When one has the database systems on the cloud environment either on Microsoft Azure or the Amazon AWS, believe me it’s secure, however, one can configure the backups and redundancy in available / nearest zone. In case of an issue at one location the business will not suffer as the database systems are still available, up and running.loud

6. Performance –

   When it comes to performance, one can choose the IOPs as needed by the application and business, on top of that it can also be scale-up or scale-down according to the requirement.

Why one should not adopt the cloud environment?

1. Long term costs –

   The only thing that I can think of at this very moment is – the long term costs. While having the IT staff + Infrastructure + Licensing will incur some cost at the short term as capital investment but it can be recovered in long term. As having everything or few thing on cloud will incur one’s subscription costs + internet charges over the time where as in-house infrastructure costs will be reducing over the times.

I assume that you are really enjoying all these posts. The next week I will explain how and where one will find really good resources to learn especially SQL Server on Microsoft Azure or Amazon RDS.