The cloud, also known as cloud hosting is rapidly becoming a popular option for businesses and even within the social sphere. Cloud hosting can be considered as the next level of shared hosting, whereby companies host a range of different applications across numerous machines through virtualisation rather than sharing the resources of a single, physical machine.

There are a number of reasons why companies are choosing to go down the route of virtualisation and cloud hosting, below are four of the most frequently touted advantages to this form of hosting solution.

First and foremost, the virtualisation approach means that more clients are placed on fewer physical servers. The result is that hardware, maintenance and power costs are reduced for the hosting company, subsequently making it a cheaper deal for clients. Frequently, as a business pays for such as service on a pay as you go, or highly flexible tariff, it is a more suitable and more affordable option for a company's immediate needs.

Availability can also be improved through the use of the cloud as data is shifted between multiple servers. The number of servers can be adapted to the current needs of the client, the result being that applications, data or website are available online constantly. This brings myriad advantages not least because downtime is practically removed from the equation.

This point was alluded to earlier but as cloud solutions are highly flexible, businesses are able to tailor resources to their precise and very specific needs. For instance, a company may experience a spike or peak in interest for their website or online applications, a cloud solution can quickly be expanded so greater processing power is provided, eliminating the chance of exceeding restrictive traffic limits.

Finally, this form of hosting is highly reliable; data is typically stored in multiple locations so that the failure of one server will not affect the safety or availability of the data or application. This resilience, is one of the major benefits to cloud hosting.

Today this form of hosting is rapidly becoming a popular option over both shared and dedicated hosting, it is the flexibility and the chance to save money that have made this a desirable solution for many businesses.

The above information has hoped to point out some of the benefits to using cloud hosting solutions. Essentially it has hopefully point out how the cloud can prove a flexible, reliable and cost effective method of hosting applications, websites and data.