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The Japanese word “Kaizen” literally means improvement or change for the better. How can the world’s most popular and ubiquitous blogging tool, WordPress, get any better? We can have development and CMS pundits debate about limiting the number of plugins, utilizing a CDN, caching etc. However, seldom do we hear about improvement in a broader perspective that reckon elements, such as hosting, an integral part of the equation. It’s pretty common for businesses, independent developers and boutique development agencies to overlook this factor, which may result in performance that is not at par. If you or your clients are expecting some serious traffic along with anomalous spikes, partnering with a Managed Cloud Hosting provider is highly recommended. Independent developers can also benefit by outsourcing resource intensive tasks such as optimization, performance management and server/network traffic monitoring.

Here’s looking at 5 eminent ways a quintessential WordPress-Managed Cloud partnership can yield improved results in performance and operations:

1- High Availability & Unlimited Storage Space

Forget unscheduled downtime with an 99.99% up-time guarantee. It is well documented that even a slight increase in page load (we’re talking a few seconds here) can result in significant increase in bounce rate, decrease in page views and hit you where it hurts the most – the wallet. The agility of most cloud providers in load balancing and server duplication ascertain your data isn’t lost even if something goes wrong. This is done almost instantaneously to ensure minimum downtime (something unimaginable to do with traditional hosting). Better user experience (UX) equals more revenue dollars.

Plus, you never have to worry about running low on storage space due to flexibility in scaling and adding more resources on-demand.

2-Ironclad Data Security & Backup

Another fallacy of managed cloud hosting pertains to security vulnerability; the security measures for data hosted on the cloud are just as stringent (if not more) as any other environment i.e. On-site, VPS. Moreover, Cloud Security Groups and advanced patching process makes it a more reliable option for many clients. An effective contingency backup plan and constant monitoring ensure that data is never lost even if there was a crash. High availability through redundancy policies ensure the possibility of disaster recovery (DR) in unforeseen incidents like fire, earthquake etc.

3-Agility in handling Traffic Spikes

An inherent ability of the cloud is to adapt to abrupt traffic and web activity spikes. With Auto-scaling, which automatically scales-up/scales-down the number of resources allocated to a particular site/app, your instance of WordPress will function optimally on high inbound traffic and seamlessly handle your ‘rate of change’ i.e. the number of times files or databases are modified with new information and then backed up.

Auto-scaling can be done in two ways: Front-end Site Traffic and Horizontal Scaling (for back-end processes), the choice of which depends on the defined conditions. A managed cloud partner helps you get by these jargon by evaluating your requirements and suggesting the type best suited to your needs.

4-Saves Time

Gone are the days of adding physical servers to the existing set-up. The TAT to deploy additional server(s) has decreased from couple of days (onsite) versus 5 minutes (cloud).

Additionally, with the cloud provider taking care of configuring the hardware/app, as well as procuring compatible software tools for your CMS application, things are destined to save you invaluable time. The cloud solution provider is fully responsible for these mundane tasks (including on-demand pre-installed themes and plug-ins). The end result is a vibrant, aesthetically pleasing and cross-platform compatible CMS.

5-Reduces Costs and Overheads

It isn’t rocket science to figure that removing a flurry of onsite servers, data storage and networking hardware devices, as well as reassigning the IT staff into more productive roles/tasks will drastically reduce costs. On top of that, you’ll pay only a fraction of the total monthly IT budget to the cloud provider to do it better, faster and more efficiently.