Scalability is a concern that all businesses have. Companies always want the number of visitors to their site to increase, so they must prepare for that possibility. Generally, a little extra space in the dedicated or shared servers they are using is the best solution.
For seasonal businesses, the margin of growth and decline is much bigger than a year-round business. Halloween supply and costume stores, for example, see almost no interest except for 3 months out of the year. Spirit Halloween, a division of Spencer’s, reports that their online business switches from almost nonexistent to increasing 100 to 1,000 times from August until the end of October. Other seasonal businesses – florist shops, seasonal décor, and other products that sell better during certain times of the year – have similar scalability issues.
Many seasonal companies start out using dedicated or shared servers for hosting, but soon find that they are spending money on empty space for most of the year. A florist shop, for example, has the most business around Valentine’s Day. That means the dedicated or shared servers a florist uses will only near its full capacity about two weeks out of the year. For a seasonal business, traditional hosting is not a cost-effective solution.
Switching to cloud hosting can save a seasonal business thousands of dollars each year, without sacrificing any of the quality of dedicated hosting. Cloud hosting shares resources across the Internet, allowing a large spurt of sudden traffic growth to be reallocated. Data and software is not physically stored, eliminating many of the costs of traditional hosting.
However, Fibernet Corp’s cloud hosting services are fully managed the same way as dedicated hosting. This gives any business technical support 24/7 every day of the year. Fibernet Corp also assures 100% uptime, a promise than can be kept thanks to its hardware replacement guarantee.
If your seasonal business is wasting money on unnecessary server space, it might be time to consider cloud hosting with Fibernet Corp.
Sources:
Vitale, Steve. “Overcome Frightening Seasonal Traffic With The Hybrid Cloud.” http://www.rackspace.com/blog/overcome-frightening-seasonal-traffic-with-the-hybrid-cloud/. (26 Sept. 2013).