<strong>Why Cloud Hosting Packages are a Top New Choice</strong>

In today's world of technology, businesses need as much quality in their online presence as they do in their brick and mortar building, which can be provided by Cloud hosting packages. It is almost impossible for a modern business to survive without a good online presence. The problem is that dedicated servers and other computer equipment can become very costly.

It can make it impossible for smaller businesses to compete in the online world. Needing to spend their money for other business operations, these businesses generally do not have enough left over to purchase costly equipment. Cloud hosting packages can greatly reduce costs for these smaller businesses by reducing the amount of equipment needed, reducing the amount of IT staff needed, and reducing the amount of software needed.

<strong>What are Cloud Hosting Packages Anyway?</strong>

The idea of Cloud hosting packages is that a business only has a minimal amount of computer equipment at their physical business. Most of the hardware resides in the business of the cloud hosting company. The business is able to access the equipment through a standard Internet connection from anywhere in the world.

Although, there must be enough computer hardware at the business to connect to the cloud server, the cloud server is doing the bulk of the work. Therefore, the equipment at the place of business does not necessarily need to be as advanced. The type of things the business is able to do through the cloud server depends on the hosting plan they choose.

It is a well-known fact that computer equipment requires personnel for maintenance, installation, and many other functions. The amount of computer equipment that a business has and the complexity of that equipment is one of the determining factors as to how many IT personnel a business might need.

Cloud hosting packages maintain the bulk of the computer equipment at their location. This means that individual businesses will need to hire fewer IT personnel, further reducing their expenses. With this ability, smaller businesses can certainly compete in their industry much easier.

<strong>The Functions of Cloud Hosting Packages</strong>

Cloud hosting packages can be used for many functions. They can be used simply to create websites and web applications. However, their use can also be much more extensive. The cloud hosting servers can even host applications for the businesses to use, instead of installing the applications on their own servers.

For small businesses, it may be much less expensive to pay to use these applications through the cloud hosting services, instead of completely purchasing the software to install on their own machines. Remote hosting of software can reduce the expenses of small businesses even further and speed up their computers.

Small businesses have smaller operating revenue, which makes it much harder for them to survive in the competitive world of business. Although technology and an online presence may be vitally important, many of these smaller businesses might find it hard to come up with the additional funds for these services.

By helping to reduce costs, cloud hosting services allow smaller businesses to have the same advantages as the larger businesses but at a much more affordable price. Even larger businesses may decide that they can benefit from cloud hosting packages with their more affordable options for keeping up with technological advances.

<strong>Cloud Computing Plain and Simple</strong>

Anytime you retrieve music, data, images, movies, or anything from your Smart Phone, you are using the Cloud. According to Wikipedia, cloud computing means the following: "Cloud computing describes the approach to IT infrastructure abstracted dynamically adapted to the needs of a network to provide." It is now possible to store data not only on your own computer or on your smart phone, but you can now save and store any type of file or documents on the Internet. This means you will be able to access that data from any location as long as you have an internet connection. The rapid proliferation of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets has greatly increased the use of the cloud and therefore the number of cloud service providers.

<strong>How Does it Work?</strong>

In principle, it is easy. Simply pick a company that offers free cloud storage and register. There are more than 10 cloud storage companies that offer free storage anywhere from 1GB to 10GB for free. Ideally, data can be automatically synchronized with those in the cloud on your hard disk if you are connected to the Internet. With vendors such as drop-box or Suger Sync synchronization is free. And all the major cloud services offer apps for your smart phones.

<strong>What Can I Save in My Cloud?</strong>

Actually you can save anything and everything that can be saved on a normal computer hard drive. This includes photos, music, movies, documents, spreadsheets, and all other types of files. If you need more space than what is offered for free you can always pay. But there are a ton of great free cloud providers out there like: Dropbox, iCloud, Sky Drive and more.

<strong>How Much Does Extra Storage Cost?</strong>

If you need even more memory, you have to pay a little something. The prices for additional storage vary greatly from provider to provider. In most cases you pay for a monthly fee of up to 15 cents per gigabyte. Ten gigabytes of extra memory would substantially more cost $1.50 per month. But the amount of storage is limitless. And instead of having to buy extra hardware like a flash drive or external hard drive, you can just pay a low monthly free to store your files in the cloud.

<strong>How Secure is My Data?</strong>

Even if the data is encrypted before transmission, access to the personal cloud is protected by a password, but there is also very little protection from hackers. For each file, the owner should therefore consider how dramatic it would be if the file would fall into foreign hands. For important documents or records but the backup on the net worth - because even in a fire or a burglary nothing is lost. For large files like movies, however, the acquisition makes sense to an external hard drive, since there are no monthly costs.

As technology progresses the need for personal cloud storage becomes more important. Saving data in the cloud is the perfect way to sync all your devices and access your files from anywhere. If you need less than 10 GB's of storage you can find a handful of free cloud backup companies on the web. Some of the largest providers offer free accounts for the personal user.