Cloud Hosting Mystifies Small BusinessesCloud Hosting Mystifies Small Businesses

Only about a quarter of U.S. small businesses surveyed even recognize the term, while just slightly more than half of mid-size companies knew what it means. Rackspace's Mosso operation is trying to change all that.According to Emil Sayegh, general manager of Mosso, which has pioneered use of the term, cloud hosting differs from standard managed hosting in several ways. With traditional managed hosting "you have your own dedicated gear, two-three-four-five spervers and a firewall all dedicated to you." With virtualized cloud hosting, Sayegh said, "you don't have five servers you can come to our data center and hug. Your code is spread over hundreds of servers, or maybe on a tenth of a server if your traffic is light."

Forgoing the hugs does have a payoff, though. Entry costs are much lower for cloud hosting, there's no capital expenses, and you don't have to predict what your needs will be to minimize your costs.

According to Sayegh, there are three situations where it makes sense to have a dedicated infrastructure: