Today, mobility plays a significant role in the growth of many sectors, may it be the health, education, tourism or IT sector. Day-by-day as the new technologies like cloud computing are emerging, more people are traction by it. With the help of emerging technologies banks worldwide are now able to offer home-based online banking and mobile banking services, providing customers with a handier manner to manage their banking transaction, saving their precious time, while at the same time improving efficiency and the quality of service.

Among the fast growing technologies are BYOD and Mobile Banking. Today, mobile devices are expanding and being used for complex processes such as internet surfing, online shopping as well as for banking.

The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is one of the current trends people are going crazy about. It is a concept that enables users to make use of their own mobile devices to access any kind of information and perform various tasks. It proposes to take benefits of these chances to better the performance of bank customers and, therefore, the efficiency of bank processes.

The main advantage of BYOD is that it supports a mobile and cloud-centric IT strategy, which can offer a lot of benefits the end-user as well as organizations. Especially with collaboration, customers would be able to make financial transactions from their own compatible device through a fully secure and encrypted network.

Whether BYOD has been authorized or not, but when you manage it in a proper way, it isn’t really any big security deal. Also, though the online banking seems to be a convenient way for customers, but there are some disadvantages of online banking.

Cyber criminals are targeting the online banking accounts frequently due to which the fraud schemes are becoming more complex. Since the security threats are rising daily, consumers are very concerned about the mobile banking security as well. As a result, banks require executing sufficient security measures or security layers to protect themselves and diminish the security concerns from consumers mind.

Nowadays, many banks are implementing cloud-based solutions in place for utilizing services such as email filtering, anti-virus and to promote products via streaming media. But, can cloud solutions overcome the fear of mobile banking security?

Does Cloud Hosting Really Help with Mobile Banking Security?

Since, cloud hosting has appeared in the industry, it has been considered as the best and cost-effective solution benefiting various sectors. Basically, the cloud hosting enables users to have access to their data and perform tasks at anytime, from any place, via any mobile devices supporting internet connectivity.

Cloud technology plays a very important role in Banking Sector and offers various benefits without compromising the security. Even though security is the biggest concern for banks and their customers, cloud hosting can still overcome the security issues by implementing multiple security layers, making mobile banking a safer way for customers to make financial transactions.

Within banks, it’s all about the banking application and data. Since both the things are very critical and confidential for banks, it requires implementation of proper security measures or a fully secured cloud strategy to ensure the security of the data and application from hackers. While making a cloud strategy, banks can ensure the following things:

• Find out the most important business functions that can be run in various cloud environments and organize the information by sensitivity.
• Create a complete list of requirements relating to the business functions the bank will be operating in the cloud.
• Additionally, banks can have a fully secured private cloud, as it is stronger than the public cloud and can help banks to retain control over their IT, apply accurate security and while offering reduced complexity, greater flexibility, and all other advantages associated with cloud computing.
• Also, banks can choose to keep their databases inside and move only the SOA-based and multi-tenant architecture applications used by customers and internet staff under the private cloud infrastructure. It can help bank tellers and managers of branch to have access to the required products and applications using a single system or device. It also decreases the requirements such as branch servers as well as the bank staff doesn’t require the latest desktop PC hardware.
• Also, as the private clouds are set up within the banks firewall, the security threats are totally eliminated.

With the quick rise in Cloud Computing use cases and user interest it wasn’t unusual for hosting to be done in the cloud as well. All the benefits of the cloud platform like flexibility, scalability and on-demand resources can be applied effectively to web hosting services and make it a much better alternative to traditional services.

To understand this better, we first look at what cloud computing is? Cloud Computing is the cluster of computers or servers clubbed together and the resources are offered in virtualized portions as requested by the users. This is supplied over the internet under the software as a service (SaaS) model of cloud computing.

Even though the data can be accessed by the users from their own devices which are connected to the internet the data is actually stored at a different location in servers in a data center which is secure and safe. This allows users to do away with the need of maintaining on-premise storage equipments and the need to employ costly administrators for the same leading to reduced costs.

Hosting in the Cloud

We now know how cloud computing is done now let’s take a look at web hosting in the cloud.

Ideally, the web hosting provider provides resources which are available on its server for hosting the websites of the clients. These resources are limited to the extent of the capacity of the server which often results in overloading and eventual crashing of sites. To address this issue you could probably switch to a dedicated server with a much higher resource stock and end up paying a fortune or keep facing issues time and again. But with the cloud you have ample of resources up to the extent of the combined capacity of all the servers in the cloud which is often quite high. The resources are high and the load is balanced equally between all the servers in the cloud allowing you maximum uptime and better site performance.

Now, when you get resources without interruption or downtime and the cost incurred is based on the amount of usage which brings down the unnecessary cost involved in having higher resources which often go unused. This makes cloud hosting server a better option which gives necessary resources at low cost and ensures high uptime as well.

Differences Between Private Cloud & Public Cloud

Choosing a private cloud or public cloud is one of the dilemmas that sometimes concern to those responsible for the companies. In terms of performance, both cloud services share almost similar nature, however, distinguish only in their core architecture. According to many IT researchers,  analysts and professionals, a public cloud dominates over the private cloud service.

Let’s take a look at both cloud services and their benefits to organizations:

Private Cloud Vs Public Cloud

Private Cloud

Usually, a private cloud service is chosen by the large companies whose concerns are more with the security and management problems. Since, it is accessible and works independently behind a hardware firewall settings, it simply proves that it cannot be accessed from anywhere and at anytime.

Regarding the scalability factor, the private cloud hosting infrastructure provides a fully scalable business environment to organizations. Organizations can expand the cloud environment as per users needs due to the flexibility it offers.

In private cloud service, usually the initial costs are higher, although they can derive significant benefits to companies as the cost gets minimal if used for a longer period of time. Also, the bill is charged on the basis of per GB usage along with bandwidth transfer fees.

Public Cloud

There are many enterprises & organizations which opt for public cloud hosting service, just because they are more acquainted with this kind of services offered by hosting providers and whose platforms are well-known, if not then at least they use it by reference.

Public Cloud architecture is usually built in such a way that the business environment is shared and accessible at anytime and from anywhere through an Internet. The service and resources are shared and utilized respectively via Internet. Even though, it exposes security risks, it is considered as a better solution due to the various benefits.

• The initial cost for using public cloud is low, however, if the data is stored for a longer duration, you may find it expensive.
• Since, it is easily accessible from any corner of the world using an internet connection, most of the organizations opt for public cloud solution.
• The most important factors that makes public cloud computing service more popular are the Availability & Reliability.
• Users need to pay a monthly bill for using services, from this we can derive a cost optimization without requiring a significant investment.

Well, these were some of the benefits of private and public cloud to SMEs and Organizations. But do you really know, what’s industry opinion about cloud computing and its managed services?

According to many IT professionals and industry Analysts, regardless of both being distinct on various factors, it is very tough to comment the best cloud service. Both the cloud services have similar advantages and disadvantages. However, there are several important factors like access patterns, security, confidentiality, SLAs that needs enhancement, so that it can prove that the cloud technology is much advantageous for establishing businesses in a public or private environment.

eNlight is an intelligent, auto scalable cloud that calculates the need for additional resources and the need to withdraw them as and when required, therefore providing a truly scalable environment. Equipped with an intuitive control panel, customers can easily manage their entire eNlight cloud including billing tasks, performance monitoring and creating virtual machines (VMs).

Let us see how you can use the eNlight control panel to add new VMs to your cloud. Once you complete the payment process, your account will be created and you will receive the login details to the eNlight panel. Once you login, you can start creating a VM in eNlight.

How can I create a new VM from the eNlight control panel?
It is very easy to create a new VM in eNlight. Click on “Create VM” button on right hand side of the eNlight panel.
In the box that appears next, you will be able to specify the Display Name, select ‘Template’ (operating system), define scaling of VM, define max. RAM and CPU.

Once you enter all the details according to your requirements, “Create VM”. A pop up window will ask for confirmation of the new VM creation. Press “OK” to confirm.

Next, another screen will appear with the login details of your VM. Please save these details.

What other features are included in the eNlight panel to manage my VMs?
You have complete freedom with the panel to create, start, shut down, delete and restart VMs as and when your requirements change.

Is there a limit on the number of cloud servers I can create?
Absolutely not! You can create as many VMs as you wish on your eNlight cloud server. We have set a limit on the number of virtual servers a user can create on a single day; there is no restriction on the count of VMs that you can create.

How much control do I have on my virtual servers?
You have absolute control over your eNlight cloud virtual servers. You can manage your VMs as you want.

How can I check the resource usage of my VMs?
The intuitive control panel will let you see the live resources allocated to your server in the control panel. The usage stastics are updated every 5 minutes, you can check those logs for each of your VMs.

Can I create virtual servers for my customers? Can I monitor those VMs too?
Yes, you can create VMs for your customers with appropriate display names- and through the eNlight panel, you can monitor their usage as well.

What if I accidently delete one of my Virtual Servers? Will the files still be available?
Please be careful with deleting your VMs. We might keep the VMs for a short time, but we cannot guarantee the recovery of files from the deleted VMs. Also, in case we are able to recover the deleted VM, you will be charged for the time during which the VM was in deleted state.

What will be the speed of the each VM of eNlight cloud?
Each virtual machine will have hardware dependent CPU capabilities. Moreover the current setup has Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5660 @ 2.80GHz each. We assign a certain number of VCPU to each virtual server. Every VCPU is of same speed as of the host CPU.

Will there be any hidden costs?
No. eNlight cloud works on pay-per-consume model, so you pay for only what you use. You will only be billed for new virtual server creation. Other than that, any third party software or additional IPs will be billed separately.

eNlight Enterprise Cloud

The shared cloud is offered to promote affordable cloud hosting that is accessible to users of all abilities and businesses of any size so that they are able to reap the benefits of the reliability and security that the cloud platform can provide. eNlight cloud hosting from Bodhost utilizes one of the core principles of promoting affordability in the shared cloud – the pay-per-use concept; the definition of ‘pay-per-use’ in this context is that you will be paying for the resources that you wish to have allocated to your server or are using and nothing beyond that. Furthermore, the eNlight platform allows for the expansion of virtual machines with just a few clicks so that resources are assigned immediately; with this feature we can assure you that no downtime will be incurred when adjusting the resource arrangement on one of your virtual machines.

Offering low unit prices for each of the resources that form an eNlight virtual machine is another feather in the crown of the platform; although affordability can be achieved by allowing customers to specify the units that they require of each individual resource, it is important to offer competitive resource pricing so that even customers with low budgets are able to obtain a reasonably powerful VM for the price. The major benefits of the enterprise cloud hosting can also be whittled down to:

• A 99.95% uptime guarantee is provided with all Bodhost enterprise cloud hosting plans because the architecture of the cloud introduces a high level of redundancy that ensures that there are no single points of failure in the network or hardware architecture
• As all cloud servers communicate with one another via an internal network, you can be assured that your data is hosted in a secure environment and that it will be very hard for hackers to intercept these communications
• The eNlight platform can be managed directly from our web interface where you can order additional resources for your existing VMs as well as create new virtual machines to ensure that your demands are constantly fulfilled.

More often than not even the largest of businesses won’t be able to fully utilize what a private cloud can offer in terms of capacity and the shared cloud often has more than enough clout to offer – Bodhost is always adding additional capacity in the form of extra hardware to ensure that our eNlight clusters are able to improve the performance of their virtual machines then necessary. Auto-scaling is also available for situations where demand can’t be predicted and where you may not be in a position manually increase the resources of your virtual machine(s); auto-scaling will automatically allocate the resources that your VMs require to remain stable when they are put under a high load, with these additional resources then withdrawn once demand subsides.

Web Hosting vs. Cloud Computing

As an enterprise web hosting company, Bodhost is able to offer one of the best shared cloud platforms in the US and we believe that our cloud hosting plans are some of the most affordable and offer a number of additional benefits over traditional web hosting plans. Even though the cloud may be a more expensive endeavor for some, the additional cost is there to cover the extra hardware that is used to provide a stable hosting environment; traditional web hosting plans that use single-server configurations often fail to meet an uptime level of 99.95% because there is no redundancy in place to handle server failures.

Cloud computing as a technology is being slowly adopted by businesses of all sizes because it allows for the centralized storage of documents and application data so that users are able to create a consistent experience between all of the devices that they use to access the cloud, whether these are computers or mobile devices. In the context of web hosting, the cloud introduces the concept of having full control of your virtual machines along with other external factors; IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platforms such as eNlight not only provide you with virtual machines, but these VMs can be adapted as you see as necessary and you can adjust external settings and setup features including firewalls and vLANs between eNlight VMs.

For an unmatchable enterprise cloud hosting experience, you should look into Bodhost’s eNlight hosting services and see how USA cloud hosting can save your business money.