A cloud environment is a hosted platform that provides processing power, storage and other IT resources. These can include hybrid, private or public platforms. The managing of these environments is an important issue, with a focus on security, cost-efficiency and availability.

A solid cloud-based strategy can facilitate flexibility, agility and scale while also enhancing innovation and performance for your business. This strategy can be challenging to implement and manage since it requires different processes, technologies, and skills for every business. To effectively manage multiple platforms, the appropriate tools, techniques and expertise are vital. They also offer security control and automation, while not limiting speed.

While on-premise software has been a boon to enterprises well for quite a while and could continue to do so but the advantages of cloud computing is obvious. Instead of hosting applications and data on servers owned by companies they are hosted by a third-party service, with these details the provider often offering the latest security measures. EDI software that was once installed on the premises of a business is now offered as a cloud-based service reducing the cost of installation for companies and permitting them to pay for it on a recurring schedule.

In terms of cloud environments, the most popular are infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platforms, which offer virtual machine instances that can be started, stopped, accessed and configured depending on user needs. They offer the greatest flexibility in resource allocation. Businesses can select from small instances, medium and large and the compute-optimized and memory-optimized variants.