System i cloud hosting services offer major opportunities for you to save on your IT budget and free up your staff so they can focus more on application development and other critical operations. Companies all over are transferring to cloud-based computing environments for all sorts of reasons, such as temporary development and testing requirements, increasingly unwieldy backup windows, and the need to shift to an operating expense. Because of the scalability of cloud hosting, you won’t have to worry about not having enough resources or having so much that you’re paying for unused equipment. And, since the hardware is offsite and managed by your cloud provider, your IT staff won’t have to worry about procuring and installing extra equipment.

Of course, it pays to do your research and find the System i hosting provider that is the most capable of providing you with exactly what you need for your company’s computing environment. An easy way to check is by looking at the variety of cloud solutions offered. Different types of services generally include infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and business continuity solutions, all of which have different levels of host management, data backup, and more to suit the specialized needs of different companies. Also, pay attention to how reliable your provider’s hardware is known to be; even the most affordable cloud hosting plans should have reliable and secure remote storage for your data.